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Artist's impression of the surface of comet 2I/Borisov. ESO/M. KORMESSER The interstellar comet’s pristine nature is a sign that perhaps our solar system is not so different from others in the galaxy. Our solar system is full of comets that whizz by as we track them over centuries. But humans have so far seen only two visiting objects from outside the solar system. There’s ‘Oumuamua, the interstellar asteroid that we think might actually be a flat pancake-like rock originating from the remains of an exoplanet similar to Pluto. It’s so weird that people thought maybe it was an alien spacecraft....

May 8, 2020May 8, 2020 by Evan GoughA Cool Idea to Catch Up With an Interstellar Visitor Poor, dim-witted humanity. We used to think we were the center of everything. That wasn’t that long ago, and even though we’ve made tremendous advancements in our understanding of our situation here in space, we still have huge blind spots.For one, we’re only now waking up to the reality of interstellar objects passing through our Solar System. In 2017, Oumuamua came for a brief visit, and was confirmed as an interstellar object. It’ll never return, and will spend an eternity travelling through the...

In the first of these new images, taken on Nov. 16, the comet was approximately 203 million miles from Earth, seen in front of a distant spiral galaxy known as 2MASX J10500165-0152029, according to a NASA statement. You can see the comet's tail of dust up to the right. You can also see that the object's bright core looks smudged, as Hubble was imaging the object while also tracking its movement. In both images, 2I/Borisov has been artificially colored blue so that details can be seen in the coma, or envelope of dust and material that surrounds the comet's core,...

An Astronomer has released our best and sharpest look to date at Comet Borisov, the second ever-known interstellar object to visit our solar system, using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope to capture the new image. The comet was travelling at around 110,000 miles per hour when University of California Los Angeles astronomer David Jewitt studied it on October 12, 2019, when it was 260 million miles away. The comet — which is named after the Crimean astronomer who discovered it — will pass within around 177,000 miles (285,000 kilometres) of the Earth in early December this year. It is trailing behind...