12P/Pons-Brooks, a colossal comet the size of a small city, operates like a moving ice volcano and has erupted violently for the second time as it races towards the Sun.
According to Live Science, 12P/Pons-Brooks has caught attention due to peculiar horn-like structures emerging from its giant “body.”
Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks – (Photo: Comet Chasers/Richard Miles).
On July 20, a tremendous explosion blew away these horns. This outburst, in the form of an “ice volcano”, was powerful enough to expand its coma to 230,000 km, which is over 7,000 times wider than the comet’s nucleus.
The coma, also known as the “head of the comet”, is the beautiful halo surrounding comets as they approach the Sun, causing the comet’s cold material to sublimate.
In observational data from October 2023, another “ice volcano” eruption was recorded by the British Astronomical Association (BAA), an event that made the comet shine dozens of times brighter than usual.
Days later, its coma continued to expand, and a new pair of strange horns emerged, according to Spaceweather.com.
Some experts jokingly remarked that the unusual shape of the coma makes this comet resemble a spaceship from a science fiction movie, such as the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
According to astronomer Richard Miles from the BAA, the abnormal shape of the coma may be due to the comet’s nucleus, which causes gas to escape unevenly in certain areas.
12P/Pons-Brooks is swiftly moving inward within the solar system, following an elliptical orbit that takes 71 years around our parent star.
12P/Pons-Brooks will make its closest approach to Earth on April 21, 2024. With its brightness and colossal size, it will be visible to the naked eye. It will not visit us again until 2095.
