2I/Borisov, discovered in August 2019 by amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov, was the first confirmed interstellar comet — and the second interstellar visitor ever detected after 1I/ʻOumuamua. It arrived on a hyperbolic trajectory with an eccentricity near 3.4 and a perihelion of 2.0 AU, passing through the inner Solar System before heading back into interstellar space. Spectroscopy revealed a coma rich in cyanide and water, closely resembling Solar System comets. Hubble and ground-based telescopes tracked Borisov from beyond Mars's orbit through perihelion. Its passage confirmed that comets are ejected from planetary systems throughout the galaxy and occasionally wander through ours.

Interstellar Comet Borisov

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