© ESO/O. Hainaut
This image was taken with the FORS2 instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in late 2019, when comet 2I/Borisov passed near the Sun.Since the comet was travelling at breakneck speed, around 175 000 kilometres per hour, the background stars appeared as streaks of light as the telescope followed the comet's trajectory. The colours in these streaks give the image some disco flair and are the result of combining observations in different wavelength bands, highlighted by the various colours in this composite image.
This image was taken with the FORS2 instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope in late 2019, when comet 2I/Borisov passed near the Sun.Since the comet was travelling at breakneck speed, around 175 000 kilometres per hour, the background stars appeared as streaks of light as the telescope followed the comet's trajectory. The colours in these streaks give the image some disco flair and are the result of combining observations in different wavelength bands, highlighted by the various colours in this composite image.
2I/Borisov was discovered by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov in August 2019 and was confirmed to have come from beyond the Solar System a few weeks later. "2I/Borisov could represent the first truly pristine comet ever observed," says Stefano Bagnulo of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, Northern Ireland, UK, who led the new study published today in Nature Communications. The team believes that the comet had never passed close to any star before it flew by the Sun in 2019.
Comment: The difference between comets and asteroids would appear to be their electrical properties for more on that, see: