Comet 17P/Holmes exploded with the largest known outburst in astronomical history, and the resulting dust has been traveling across space.
This year, it will be visible in the skies above Earth.
Researchers expect that the dust trails left by the comet outburst will be visible in August 2022, beginning as early as the end of July, using even small ground-based telescopes.
The crew has already seen the dust trail, and the report describes the hourglass pattern created by the particles in a comet’s trail.
According to the findings, the particle cloud generates a cyclic ‘hourglass’ pattern that converges at precise spots in space.
The Hubble space telescope first identified comet 17P/Holmes on June 15, 1999, when there was almost no dusty veil around the nucleus.
The comet was 149 million miles away from Earth at the time of the explosion.
