3 ms·
Alma reveals unusual composition of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov
- amerine 7y ago> Stefanie Milam at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, revealed that the gas coming out of the comet contained unusually high amounts of carbon monoxide (CO). The concentration of CO is higher than anyone has detected in any comet within 2 au from the Sun (within less than 186 million miles, or 300 million kilometers). Is that really that far in the scale of things traveling through our solar system?
- nitrogen 7y agoNot sure, but maybe that implies that most local comets lose their CO before getting that close to the sun?
- tectonic 7y agoFrom https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-release/alma-reveals-unusual-composition-of-interstellar-comet-2i-borisov/ https://www.almaobservatory.org/en/press-release/alma-reveal...: "the concentration of CO is higher than anyone has detected in any comet within 2 astronomical units (au) from the Sun,”suggesting that “the comet must have formed from material very rich in CO ice, which is only present at the lowest temperatures found in space, below -420 degrees Fahrenheit (-250 degrees Celsius). [...] If the gases we observed reflect the composition of 2I/Borisov’s birthplace, then it shows that it may have formed in a different way than our own solar system comets, in an extremely cold, outer region of a distant planetary system."