NASA is reporting that astronomers viewing our solar system’s asteroid belt with NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope have seen for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails of dust.
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Designated P/2013 P5, the asteroid resembles a rotating lawn sprinkler.
“We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it,” lead investigator David Jewitt, of the University of California at Los Angeles, said.
“Even more amazing, its tail structures changed dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust.
“That also caught us by surprise.
“It’s hard to believe we’re looking at an asteroid.”
Jewitt leads a team whose research paper appears online in the November 7 issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
P/2013 P5 has been ejecting dust periodically for at least five months.
Astronomers believe it is possible the asteroid’s rotation rate increased to the point where its surface started flying apart.
They do not believe the tails are the result of an impact with another asteroid because they have not seen a large quantity of dust blasted into space all at once.
Scientists using the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii announced their discovery of the asteroid on August 27.
P/2013 P5 appeared as an unusually fuzzy-looking object.
The multiple tails were discovered when Hubble was used to take a more detailed image Sept. 10.
When Hubble looked at the asteroid again September 23, its appearance had totally changed. It looked as if the entire structure had swung around. “We were completely knocked out,” Jewitt said.
Astronomers will continue observing P/2013 P5 to see whether the dust leaves the asteroid in the equatorial plane. If it does, this would be strong evidence for a rotational break-up.
Jewitt’s interpretation implies that rotational break-up must be a common phenomenon in the asteroid belt. It might even be the main way small asteroids die.
“In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more,” Jewitt said.
“This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come.”
CARGO SPACECRAFT DISINTEGRATES OVER PACIFIC
Deep in the cold, desolate and uninhabited sea world at the south of the vast Pacific Ocean lie the remains of many of space exploration’s used spaceships and debris.
It is one of the safest areas on Earth to splash down unwanted debris. That most famous Russian space station MIR lies there along with many other space junk objects.
Now they have been joined by the "Albert Einstein” the European Space Agency’s Automated Transport Vehicle, the ATV-4, an unmanned supply ship.
Early this month in this image captured by an astronaut on the International Space Station we see the rapid demise of this non reusable cargo ship.
It undocked from the space station on October 28. It was filled with 1.6 tons of waste after five months linked to the orbiting lab.
After delivering supplies to the space station, ATV cargo ships are designed to break up in Earth's atmosphere.