It came from outer space: Newly discovered comet is likely interstellar visitor

It came from outer space.

A newly discovered comet appears to be from outside our solar system, scientists reported Thursday.

Although it hasn't been officially confirmed that the object is an interstellar comet, if it is, it would be only the second such object ever detected. The first, named 'Oumuamua, was observed and confirmed in October 2017.

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"It's so exciting, we're basically looking away from all of our other projects right now," Olivier Hainaut, an astronomer with the European Southern Observatory, told Business Insider.

"The main difference from 'Oumuamua and this one is that we got it a long, long time in advance, " he said. "Now astronomers are much more prepared."

The comet, dubbed C/2019 Q4, was discovered Aug. 30 by Gennady Borisov at an observatory in Nauchnij, Crimea.

The comet is inbound toward the sun, but it will remain farther than the orbit of Mars and will approach no closer to Earth than about 190 million miles in early December, NASA said.

"The comet's current velocity is high, about 93,000 mph, which is well above the typical velocities of objects orbiting the sun at that distance," NASA's Davide Farnocchia said in a statement. "The high velocity indicates not only that the object likely originated from outside our solar system, but also that it will leave and head back to interstellar space."

It won't be visible with the naked eye, but it can be viewed through professional telescopes. "The object will peak in brightness in mid-December and continue to be observable with moderate-size telescopes until April 2020," Farnocchia said.

Observations completed by the University of Hawaii indicate the comet nucleus is 1.2 to 10 miles in diameter.

"Here we have something that was born around another star and traveling toward us," Hainaut told Business Insider. "It's the next best thing to sending a probe to a different solar system."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Comet is likely interstellar visitor, NASA said