Interstellar Comet Borisov carries relic of birthplace

摘要

New observations with the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ESO's VLT) indicate that the rogue comet 2I/Borisov, which is only the second detected interstellar visitor to our Solar System, is one of the most pristine ever observed. Astronomers suspect that the comet, which flew by the Sun in 2019, most likely never passed close to a star, making it an undisturbed relic of the cloud of gas and dust it formed from. 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," said Stefano Bagnulo of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, Northern Ireland, UK, who led the new study published in Nature Communications.