The comet, thought to be 80 miles across, has been sized up by the Hubble Space Telescope—despite being a staggering 2 billion miles away.
The comet's nucleus—the icy object at the heart of the comet that doesn't include its tail—is thought to be 80 miles across and may weigh about 500 trillion tons.
NASA says C/2014 UN271 has the largest comet nucleus ever seen. The comet was spotted with the Hubble Space Telescope. However, only now have researchers been able to determine exactly how big it is. That's partly because the comet is about 2 billion miles away—further than the planet Uranus. It's also partly because comets are surrounded by a shell of gas and dust forming their characteristic tails and shrouding their center.
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