Astronomers of the University of Maryland (USA) showed that the largest of the found comet – Bernardine-Bernstein comet (BB) with a diameter of 100 kilometers – became active away from the Sun, long before it was previously thought. Ice inside it evaporates, forming a tail and to whom – a cloud of dust and gas. Anomaly is reported in the article published in The Planetary Science Journal.
Comets are the accumulations of dust and ice remaining after the formation of the solar system. When the comet is approaching the sun, the ice begins to evaporate. The moment when the comet becomes active and becomes a tail depends on what the ice (water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide or other connection).
Astronomers analyzed thousands of images of the BB comet, obtained by the exoplanet TESss search spacecraft from 2018 to 2020. It turned out that a foggy glow of dust arose around the comet, which was confirmed, is a coma. The size of the comet and its distance from the Sun suggests that it consists of carbon oxide, which can begin to evaporate when the comet could be five times further from the Sun than its location at the time of observation.