Hubble Uncovers the Farthest Active Inbound Comet Yet Seen
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows a fuzzy cloud of dust, called a coma, surrounding the comet C/2017 K2 PANSTARRS (K2), the farthest active comet ever observed entering the solar system.
Hubble snapped images of K2 when the frozen visitor was 1.5 billion miles from the Sun, just beyond Saturn's orbit. Even at that remote distance, sunlight is warming the frigid comet, producing an 80,000-mile-wide coma that envelops a tiny, solid nucleus.
K2 has been traveling for millions of years from its home in the Oort Cloud, a spherical region at the edge of our solar system. This frigid area contains hundreds of billions of comets, the icy leftovers from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago.
The image was taken in June 2017 by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | C/2017 K2 |
| Object Description | Primordial comet |
| R.A. Position | 17 31 52.239 |
| Dec. Position | +64 35 39.52 |
| Distance | 15.82AU at the time of observation |
| Dimensions | The image is about 40 arcseconds across, about 16.3 million miles (26.3 million kilometers) at the distance of the comet. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Data were provided by the HST proposals (D. Jewett, P.I.). |
| Instrument | WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | June 27, 2017 |
| Filters | F350LP |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | These images represent several exposures acquired by the WFC3/UVIS instrument through the F350LP filter on the Hubble Space Telescope. Color has been applied to the grayscale (black&white) images; the brightness maps to different color values. |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
