{"id":17856,"date":"2019-12-13T01:16:46","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T17:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/hubble-image-shows-distant-galaxy-photobombing-an-interstellar-comet-as-it-swings-around-the-sun\/"},"modified":"2019-12-13T01:16:46","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T17:16:46","slug":"hubble-image-shows-distant-galaxy-photobombing-an-interstellar-comet-as-it-swings-around-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/hubble-image-shows-distant-galaxy-photobombing-an-interstellar-comet-as-it-swings-around-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Hubble image shows distant galaxy photobombing an interstellar comet as it swings around the sun"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_537782\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-537782\" style=\"width: 630px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full-width wp-image-537782\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/191212-borisov-630x575.png\" alt=\"Interstellar comet and galaxy\" width=\"630\" height=\"575\" srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/191212-borisov-630x575.png 630w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/191212-borisov-768x701.png 768w, https:\/\/cdn.geekwire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/191212-borisov.png 913w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\"><figcaption data-nosnippet=\"\" id=\"caption-attachment-537782\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comet 2I\/Borisov appears as a bright dot within a haze of dust, with a distant spiral galaxy in the background of the Hubble Space Telescope image, taken on Nov. 16. The comet was about 203 million miles from Earth when the picture was taken. (NASA \/ ESA \/ UCLA \/ D. Jewitt)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped the best images to date showing the interstellar comet known as 2I\/Borisov, and one of the pictures shows a faraway spiral galaxy just off to the side.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Comet Borisov, whose trajectory has been traced far beyond our solar system, swung around the sun on Dec. 8 and is now heading outward again. Hubble\u2019s image shows the comet as a bright dot, surrounded by a haze of dust trailing off to the upper right. The galaxy that can be seen in a Nov. 16 image \u2014 known as 2MASX J10500165-0152029 \u2014 looks fuzzy because Hubble was tracking the comet instead.<\/li>\n<li>Based on the pictures released today \u2014 including another shot that was captured on Dec. 9, just after the closest approach to the sun \u2014 astronomers estimate the width of Borisov\u2019s nucleus to be less than half a kilometer (a quarter-mile). That\u2019s 15 times smaller than earlier estimates. \u201cKnowing the size is potentially useful for beginning to estimate how common such objects may be in the solar system and our galaxy,\u201d UCLA\u2019s David Jewitt said in a news release.<\/li>\n<li>The studies so far suggest that Borisov\u2019s composition is similar to the chemical makeup of comets born in our own solar system. Such evidence supports the view that comets form around other stars the way they do around our sun. Stay tuned: Borisov makes its closest approach to Earth on Dec. 28, and astronomers are likely to keep tracking the comet as it heads back toward the interstellar abyss.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comet 2I\/Borisov appears as a bright dot within a haze of dust, with a distant spiral galaxy in the background of the Hubble Space Telescope image, taken on Nov. 16. The comet was about 203 million miles from Earth when the picture was taken. (NASA \/ ESA \/ UCLA \/ D. Jewitt) The Hubble Space [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4908,4259,898,4411],"class_list":["post-17856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-2i-borisov","tag-hubble","tag-hubble-space-telescope","tag-interstellar-objects"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}