Hubble may have seen collision of two asteroids

William Atkins
Wednesday, 03 February 2010 08:15

Science - Space

The NASA Hubble Space Telescope may have photographed the debris left over after two asteroids collided. Although such asteroid-asteroid smashups do happen in the Solar System, such a collision has never been seen before by anyone on Earth.



The February 2, 2010 NASA media brief “Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Trailing Debris” states that the comet-like object P/2010 A2 photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope shows “…a complex X-pattern of filamentary structures near the nucleus.”

Because of how P/2010 A2 looks from the images so far taken of it, NASA thinks that the object contains a debris field that is left over from the collision of two asteroids.

See it for yourself. A photograph of P/2010 A2 is found at the Astrosurf.com website, when it was taken on January 8, 2010.

P/2010 A2 has an approximate 3.5-year orbit around the Sun. Its closest approach to the Sun--for its current orbit--occurred at the beginning of December 2009, about one month before it was discovered.

The object was discovered by astronomers,  on January 6, 2010, while using the sky survey Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program.

The LINEAR program uses a 1-meter (36-inch) reflecting telescope with a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera.

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