The first known comet to visit us from another star system has an unusual make-up, according to new research.
The interstellar comet 2I/Borisov was detected in our Solar System last year.
This mysterious visitor from the depths of space has provided astronomers with an unprecedented opportunity to study how different it is from comets that have been formed around the Sun.
New data suggests it contains large amounts of carbon monoxide - a possible clue to where it was "born".
The findings appear in two separate scientific papers published by the journal Nature Astronomy.
In one of the papers, an international team led by Martin Cordiner and Stefanie Milam from the US space agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, pointed the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (Alma) toward the comet on 15 and 16 December 2019.
Alma consists of 66 antennas on a mountaintop in Chile that observe the sky at sub-millimetre wavelengths.
In the other study, Dennis Bodewits from Auburn University in Alabama and colleagues gathered ultraviolet observations of the interstellar comet using the Hubble Space Telescope and the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory.
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