Thankfully, this loss in its position is temporary, I understand:
The Sun is no longer the largest object in the Solar System: That honour has fallen temporarily to a previously innocuous comet. The comet, called 17P Holmes, shot to prominence in late October when its brightness suddenly increased roughly a million-fold.Since then, both its size and its profile have grown — earlier this month astronomers at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy declared that its diameter had outstripped that of our Sun.
The piece goes on to give more information on the varieties of the death of comets:
Some porous, rocky bodies in the Solar System are thought to be the rocky corpses of comets that have lost all their mass. Others, such as Shoemaker-Levy 9, are ripped apart when they stray too close to other huge bodies such as Jupiter. And some comets just die a mundane death, Roche says: “Every now and then they just fall apart, almost as if they’re dying of old age.”
Take a look!
Tags: Comet 17P Holmes
Entertaining Research 
March 28, 2010 at 12:54 pm |
Hello,
I am interested in knowing a lot about planets, stars and comets.
Is the Comet 17P Holmes still bigger than the Sun?
Thank you!
Ebenezer T. Bifubyeka.
tenbifubyeka@gmail.com