News Space

Interstellar comet Borisov has an unexpected amount of carbon monoxide

Second visitor from the stars has three times the CO relative to H2O than any local comets

comet 2I/Borisov

A wispy tail of gas and dust trails behind interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, seen about 420 million kilometers from Earth in this Hubble Space Telescope picture from October 12, 2019.

D. Jewitt/UCLA, ESA, NASA

By Christopher Crockett

Comet 2I/Borisov, the solar system’s second known interstellar visitor, probably hails from a planetary family that is chemically distinct from our own.