November 16, 2019, photo (left)
- The comet appears in front of a distant background spies galaxy (2MASX J10500165-0152029). The galaxy's bright central core is smeared in the image because Hubble was tracking the comet. Comet Borisov was approximately 203 million miles from earth in this exposure. Its tail of ejected dust steaks off to the upper right. The comet has been artificially coloured blue to discriminate fine detail in the hall of dust, surrounding the central nucleus. It also helps to visually separate the comet from the background galaxy.
December 9, 2019, photo (right)
- Hubble revisited the comet shortly after it's closest approach to the Sun where it received maximum heating after spending most of it's life in frigid interstellar space. The comet also reach a breathtaking maximum speed of 100,000 miles per hour. Comet Borisov is 185 million miles from earth in this photo, near the inner edge of the agglomeration of ices and dust, is still too small to be resolved. The bright central portion is a coma made up of dust leaving the surface.
"Hubble gives us the best upper limit of the size of comet Borisov's which is the really important part of the comet," said David Hewitt, a UCLA prof of planetary science and astronomy, whose team has look at this for first time, confirmed interstellar comet.
"Surprisingly, our Hubble images shows that its nucleus is more than 15 times smaller than earlier investigations suggested it might be. Our Hubble images shows that the radius is smaller than half a km. Knowing the size is potentially useful for beginning to estimate how common such objects may be in the solar system and our galaxy. Borisov is the first known interstellar comet, and we would like to earn how many there are."
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