Nasa’s shares image of most distant in-bound comet ever found

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Amateur astronomer Jose Chambo captured an image of comet C/2017 K2 on 20 June, which is now less than 300 million kilometers from Earth and will make its closest approach to our planet on 14 July — passing with plenty of distance — and its closest approach to the Sun in December. A huge comet with an 18-kilometer diameter core, C/2017 K2 was already producing a coma, a cloud of gas released as the Sun warmed the comet, when it was first discovered in 2017 2.4 billion kilometers away. C/2017 K2 has spent an estimated 3 million years traveling toward the Sun from the Oort cloud, a realm of icy planetesimals far beyond Neptune and even the icy Kuiper belt at the edge of the Solar System, stretching up to several light years from the Sun. open image in gallery An illustration of the Oort cloud of icy objects surrounding the Sun at great distances The Oort cloud is though to be the source of many comets following hyperbolic orbits, as C/2017 K2 does.