NGC 3572 seen with a 2.2-meter telescope at the European Southern Observatory's La Silla Observatory in Chile. Credit: ESO/G. Beccari
Star winds are pushing the gas around NGC 3572 into “elephant trunks”, as you can see if you look carefully as this picture snapped by a La Silla Observatory telescope at the European Southern Observatory in Chile. It’s a demonstration of the power of the youngster blue-white stars embedded in the cloud, which are generating huge gusts blowing the gas and dust away from them.
It’s common for young stars to form in groups. After a few million years growing together, their respective gravities pushes everything further apart, and the stars then finish their lifetimes on their own. Looking at young star clusters such as this gives astronomers a better sense about how our own Sun began its life.
If we zoomed closer to those elephant trunks, they would look similar to the famous “Pillars of Creation” image captured in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope in the Eagle Nebula (M16). NASA also did a follow-up observation using infrared wavelengths in 2005 and 2011, which made the young stars a bit easier to see amid the gas and dust.
One of the Hubble Space Telescope’s most famous images, the “Pillars of Creation” in the Eagle Nebula. Credit: NASA/ESA
As for the picture of NGC 3572, the high-resolution image from the Wide Field Imager on the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope is also revealing new mysteries that will require further investigation, ESO stated.
“A strange feature captured in this image is the tiny ring-like nebula located slightly above the centre of the image,” ESO wrote. “Astronomers still are a little uncertain about the origin of this curious feature. It is probably a dense leftover from the molecular cloud that formed the cluster, perhaps a bubble created around a very bright hot star. But some authors have considered that it may be some kind of oddly shaped planetary nebula — the remnants of a dying star.”
Astronomers were also surprised by seeing stars older than 10 million years old within this image that were still picking up mass, which implies that planetary formation could take longer than previously believed.
Research was led by ESO astronomer Giacomo Beccari.
NGC 5044 as seen by XMM-Newton. Astronomers say they are able to see hot gas moving in this galaxy because of an interaction with another galaxy millions of years ago. Credit: E. O’Sullivan & ESA
So galaxy group NGC 5044 was just sitting quietly by itself a few million years ago when galaxy NGC 5054 decided to pass right through it. That close encounter finished long ago, but the ricochet is still visible in telescopes as astronomers spotted hot gas rippling through the host galaxy.
“Galaxies are social beasts that are mostly found in groups or clusters – large assemblies of galaxies that are permeated by even larger amounts of diffuse gas. With temperatures of 10 million degrees or more, the gas in galaxy groups and clusters is hot enough to shine brightly in X-rays and be detected by ESA’s XMM-Newton X-ray observatory,” the European Space Agency stated.
“As galaxies speed through these gigantic cauldrons, they occasionally jumble the gas and forge it into lop-sided shapes. An example is revealed in this composite image of the galaxy group NGC 5044, the brightest group in X-rays in the entire sky.”
Fresh observations from XMM-Newton (in blue) are visible in this composite image with other pictures from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, the Digitized Sky Survey (optical) and Galex (near-ultraviolet).
Publication of this research was accepted in MNRAS and is currently available on prepublishing site Arxiv. The lead author is Ewan O’Sullivan, a visiting scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
November 2013 offers a chance to catch a dependable meteor shower, albeit on an off year. The Leonid meteors are set to reach their annual peak this coming weekend on Sunday, November 17th. We say it’s an off-year, but not that it should discourage you from attempting to catch the Leonids this weekend in the early dawn.
Projections for 2013 suggest a twin-peaked maximum, with the first peak arriving on November 17th at 10:00 UT/5:00 AM EST favoring North America, and the second one reaching Earth on the same date six hours later at 16:00 UT/11:00, favoring the central Pacific.
Unfortunately, the Full Moon also occurs the on very date that the Leonids peak at 10:16 AM EST/ 15:16UT, right between the two peaks! This will definitely cut down on the number of meteors you’ll see in the early AM hours.
That’s strike one against the 2013 Leonids. The next is the curious sporadic nature of this shower. Normally a minor shower with a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) in the range of 10-20 per hour, the Leonids are prone to great storms topping a ZHR of 1,000+ every 33 years. We last experienced such an event in 1998 and 1999, and we’re now approaching the mid-point lull between storms in the 2014-2016 time frame.
An early Leonid meteor captured last week from the United Kingdom Meteor Observing Network’s Church Crookham station. (Credit: UKMON/Peter-Campbell-Burns).
Still, this is one shower that’s always worth monitoring. The source of the Leonids is Comet 55p/Tempel-Tuttle, which is on a 33-year orbit and is due to reach perihelion again in 2031.
Note that the Leonids have also continued to show enhanced activity in past years even when the Moon was a factor:
2012- ZHR=47.
2011- ZHR=22, Moon=8% waning gibbous.
2010- ZHR=40, 86% waxing gibbous.
2009- ZHR=79.
2008-70 ZHR=72% waning gibbous
We even managed to observe the Leonid meteors from Vail, Arizona in 2002 and 2005, on years when the Moon was nearly Full.
Now, for the good news. The Leonids have a characteristic r value of 2.5, meaning that they produce a higher than normal ratio of fireballs. About 50-70% of Leonid meteors are estimated to leave persistent trains, a good reason to keep a pair of binoculars handy. And hey, at least the 2013 Leonids peak on the weekend, and there’s always comet’s ISON, X1 LINEAR, 2P/Encke and R1 Lovejoy to track down to boot!
A 2002 Leonid captured over Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. (Credit: NASA/MSFC/MEO/Bill Cooke).
Here’s a few tips and tricks that you can use to “beat the Moon” on your Leonid quest. One is to start observing now, on the moonless mornings leading up to the 17th. You’ll always see more Leonid meteors past local midnight as the radiant rises to the northeast. This is because you’re standing on the portion of the Earth turning forward into the meteor stream. Remember, the front windshield of your car (the Earth) always collects the most bugs (meteors). Observers who witnessed the 1966 Leonid storm reported a ZHR in excess of thousands per hour, producing a Star Trek-like effect of the Earth plowing through a “snowstorm” of meteors!
The radiant of the Leonids sits in the center of the backwards question mark asterism of the “Sickle” in the astronomical constellation Leo (hence name of the shower).
You can also improve your prospects for seeing meteors by blocking the Moon behind a building or hill. Though the Leonids will appear to radiate from Leo, they can appear anywhere in the sky. Several other minor showers, such as the Taurids and the Monocerotids, are also active in November.
Meteor shower photography is simple and can be done with nothing more than a DSLR camera on a tripod. This year, you’ll probably want to keep manual exposures short due to the Full Moon and in the 20 seconds or faster range. Simply set the camera to a low f-stop/high ISO setting and a wide field of view and shoot continuously. Catching a meteor involves luck and patience, and be sure to examine the frames after a session; every meteor I’ve caught on camera went unnoticed during observation! Don’t be afraid to experiment with different combinations to get the sky conditions just right. Also, be sure to carry and extra set of charged camera batteries, as long exposures combined with chilly November mornings can drain DSLR batteries in a hurry!
A Woodcut print depicting the 1933 Leonids as seem from Niagara Falls. (Wikimedia Commons image in the Public Domain).
The Leonids certainly have a storied history, dating back to before meteors where understood to be dust grains left by comets. The 1833 Leonids were and awesome and terrifying spectacle to those who witnessed them up and down the eastern seaboard of the U.S. In fact, the single 1833 outburst has been cited as contributing to the multiple religious fundamentalist movements that cropped up in the U.S. in the 1830s.
We witnessed the 1998 Leonids from the deserts of Kuwait while stationed at Al Jabber Air Base. It was easily one of the best meteor displays we ever saw, with a ZHR reaching in access of 500 per hour before dawn. It was intense enough that fireballs behind us would often light up the foreground like camera flashes!
Reporting rates and activity for meteor showers is always fun and easy to do — its real science that you can do using nothing more than a stopwatch and your eyes. The International Meteor Association is always looking for current meteor counts from observers. Data goes towards refining our understanding and modeling of meteor streams and future predictions. The IMO should also have a live ZHR graph for the 2013 Leonids running soon.
Have fun, stay warm, send those Leonid captures in to Universe Today, and don’t forget to tweet those meteors to #Meteorwatch!
If you’re into astronomy, or just a fan of any science fiction franchise worth its salt, then chances are you’ve heard the term parsec thrown around. But what is a parsec exactly? Basically, it’s a unit of length used to measure the astronomically large distances between objects beyond our Solar System.
Lasers like this one, at the VLT in Paranal, help counteract the blurring effect of the atmosphere. Powerful arrays of much larger lasers could hide our presence from aliens. (ESO/Y. Beletsky)
As the chill of winter settles into the northern hemisphere, fantasies of down-south travel pervade a lot of people’s dreams. Well, here’s a virtual journey to warm climes for astronomy buffs: a beautiful, music-filled timelapse of several European Southern Observatory telescopes gazing at the heavens in Chile.
Uploaded in 2011 (but promoted this morning on ESO’s Twitter feed), the timelapse was taken by astrophotographers Stéphane Guisard (also an ESO engineer) and José Francisco Salgado (who is also an astronomer at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium.) Telescopes include:
Stellar birth is visible in this image of HH 46/47 taken with the Spitzer Space Telescope and Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ALMA
Talk about birth in the fast lane. Fresh observations of HH 46/47 — an area well-known for hosting a baby star — demonstrate material from the star pushing against the surrounding gas at supersonic speeds.
“HH” stands for Herbig-Haro, a type of object created “when jets shot out by newborn stars collide with surrounding material, producing small, bright, nebulous regions,” NASA stated. It’s a little hard to see what’s inside these regions, however, as they’re clouded by debris (specifically, gas and dust).
The Spitzer space telescope (which looks in infrared) and the massive Chilean Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are both designed to look through the stuff to see what’s within. Here’s what they’ve spotted:
– ALMA: The telescope is showing that the gas is moving apart faster than ever believed, which could have echoes on how the star cloud is forming generally. “In turn, the extra turbulence could have an impact on whether and how other stars might form in this gaseous, dusty, and thus fertile, ground for star-making,” NASA added.
Another view of HH 46/47 with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). Credit: ESO/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/H. Arce. Acknowledgements to Bo Reipurth
– Spitzer: Two supersonic blobs are emerging from the star in the middle and pushing against the gas, creating the big bubbles you can see here. The right-aiming blob has a lot more material to push through than the left one, “offering a handy compare-and-contrast setup for how the outflows from a developing star interact with their surroundings,” NASA stated.
“Young stars like our sun need to remove some of the gas collapsing in on them to become stable, and HH 46/47 is an excellent laboratory for studying this outflow process,” stated Alberto Noriega-Crespo, a scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology.
“Thanks to Spitzer, the HH 46/47 outflow is considered one of the best examples of a jet being present with an expanding bubble-like structure.”
Comet R1 Lovejoy passes the Beehive Cluster: (Credit Damian Peach).
Tired of comets yet? Right now, northern hemisphere observers have four (!) comets within range of binoculars in the dawn sky. Comet C/2012 S1 ISON, is, of course, expected to dazzle towards month’s end. Comet 2P/Encke is an “old standby,” with the shortest orbital period of any comet known at 3.3 years, and is making a favorable appearance this Fall. And comet C/2012 X1 LINEAR added to the morning display recently, reaching about +8th magnitude in an unexpected outburst…
But the brightest and best placed comet for morning viewing is currently Comet C/2013 R1 Lovejoy. Shining at +6th magnitude, R1 Lovejoy just passed into the constellation Leo after a photogenic pass near the Beehive Cluster (M44) in Cancer last week. We caught sight of R1 Lovejoy a few mornings ago, and it’s an easy binocular object, looking like a fuzzy unresolved globular cluster with barely the hint of a tail.
If the name sounds familiar, that’s because the comet was discovered by Australian observer Terry Lovejoy, the prolific discoverer of four comets, including the brilliant sungrazing Comet C/2011 W3 Lovejoy that survived its 140,000 kilometre perihelion passage above the surface of the Sun on December 16th and went on to dazzle southern hemisphere observers in late 2011 and early 2012.
Comet R1 Lovejoy as imaged by Rob Sparks (@HalfAstro) from Tucson, Arizona passing near the Beehive cluster. (Credit: Rob Sparks).
Terry discovered R1 Lovejoy on September 7th, 2013 while it was still at magnitude +14.4. The comet is expected to top out at +4th magnitude in late November as it passes 61.4 million kilometres from Earth on November 19th and heads for perihelion at 0.877 AUs from the Sun on December 25nd, 2013. Comet R1 Lovejoy is on a 64 degree orbit highly inclined to the ecliptic, and has a period roughly 7,000 years long. The last time R1 Lovejoy graced Earthly skies, our early ancestors still thought copper smelting was a pretty hip idea!
The orbital path of Comet R1 Lovejoy through the inner solar system. (Credit: NASA/JPL Solar System Dynamics explorer).
And unlike comets Encke and ISON that are plunging near the Sun, Comet R1 Lovejoy never gets closer than 19 degrees elongation from our nearest star in late December. It also reaches a maximum northern declination of 43 degrees on November 28th, the same day that ISON reaches perihelion. For mid-latitude northern hemisphere observers, R1 Lovejoy will remain well placed at 35 to 45 degrees above the northeastern horizon about an hour before sunrise through late November.
Here are some key dates to aid you in your quest to spy Comet R1 Lovejoy in late November:
November 11th: Passes near +4.5 Kappa Leonis.
November 14th: Passes from Leo into the constellation Leo Minor & passes near the +5.3 star 20 Leonis Minoris.
November 16th: Passes near the +5th magnitude stars 28, 30, and 34 Leonis Minoris.
November 18th: Passes into the constellation Ursa Major.
November 19th: Passes near the +4.8 magnitude star 55 Ursae Majoris & +5.3 magnitude star 57 Ursae Majoris.
November 19th: Closest to Earth, at 0.4 AUs distant.
The celestial path of Comet R1 Lovejoy spanning November 11th to the 30th. (Created using Starry Night Education software).
November 21st: Passes into the constellation Canes Venatici.
November 22nd: Passes near the +6th magnitude star 4 Canum Venaticorum & the +4.2 magnitude star Chara (Beta Canum Venaticorum).
November 24th: Passes near the Sunflower Galaxy (M63).
November 27th: Passes into the constellation Boötes.
December 1st: Passes near +3.5 magnitude star Nekkar (Beta Boötis).
December 4th: crosses into Corona Borealis.
Note that passes on the list above denote passages closer than one degree of Comet R1 Lovejoy near bright objects.
Perihelion for the comet is December 25th at 0.877 AU, and its closest approach to Earth is November 19th. On this date, it will also be moving at its maximum apparent speed as seen from Earth, covering about 3 degrees of the sky every 24 hours, or the angular span of the Full Moon every 4 hours.
United Kingdom observer Pete Lawrence imaged Comet R1 Lovejoy this past weekend from his backyard garden using a 4-inch apochromatic refractor and a Canon 40D DSLR:
Comet R1 Lovejoy as imaged by Pete Lawrence on November 9th. (Credit: Pete Lawrence).
He also made his first confirmed binocular sighting of Comet ISON using a pair of 15×70 binocs, noting to Universe Today that “ISON’s head appears to be small and stellar compared to Lovejoy’s extended coma, which is obvious in binoculars, and also brighter!”
It’s worth noting that all four of these morning comets are on separate orbital paths, and only seem to be in the same general region of the sky as seen from our Earthly vantage point… and none of them are passing near the Earth!
This week is also a good time to hunt for comets in the pre-dawn sky for another reason: the Moon reaches Full this coming weekend on Sunday, November 17th. After this week, it will start to creep into the morning sky and interfere with deep sky observations for the next two weeks.
Comet R1 Lovejoy imaged on November 10th by astrophtographer Justin Ng. (Credit: Justin Ng).
It’s also interesting to note that amateur observers discovered two more faint comets this past weekend. Though comets C/2013 V3 Nevski and C/2013 V2 Borisov aren’t slated to be anything spectacular, that brings the number of amateur discoveries to 13 for 2013. Are amateur comet hunters mounting a comeback?
In this age of automated surveys, the question is often raised as to whether amateurs can still discover comets. Keep in mind, Terry Lovejoy found Comet R1 Lovejoy with a medium-sized 8-inch Schmidt Cassegrain reflecting telescope… the age of amateur comet hunters seemes far from over in 2013!
With an annual cost of $30.8 million, the Keck Observatory costs $53.7 thousand for a single night’s worth of operation. It will cost the James Webb Space Telescope approximately $8.8 billion to reach orbit. And the Space Launch System that will carry the Orion capsule is expected to cost $38 billion.
Why should we be spending such a vast amount of money on astronomy? How is it useful and beneficial to society?
Astronomers face this question on a daily basis. Recently a ream of European astronomers have provided tangible answers relating advancements in astronomy to advancements in industry, aerospace, energy, medicine, international collaboration, everyday life and humankind.
“I get this question quite often,” Dr. Marissa Rosenberg, lead author on the paper, told Universe Today. “One very personal reason for writing this article is that I wanted to share with my parents (both business people) why what I am doing is important and a necessary facet of society.”
Today, millions of people across the world are affected by advances in astronomy.
Industry
— Your iPhone’s camera is a charge-coupled device (CCD) — an instrument, which converts the movement of electrical charge into a digital value. Originally developed for astronomy, CCD’s are now used in most cameras, webcams and cell phones.
Every iPhone with has a built-in CCD
— The computer language Forth, originally developed for the 36-foot telescope on Kitt Peak is now used by FedEx to track packages.
— AT&T uses IRAF — software written by the National Optical Astronomy Observatory — to analyze computer systems.
— Kodak film, originally created by astronomers studying the sun, is used extensively by the medical and industrial industries, photographers and artists.
Aerospace
— Space-based telescopes have advanced defense satellites, which require identical technology and hardware.
— Global Positioning System satellites rely on astronomical objects — quasars and distant galaxies — to determine accurate positions.
Energy
— Technology gained from imaging X-rays is now used to monitor fusion — where two atomic nuclei combine to form a heavier nucleus — that may prove to be our answer for clean energy.
Medicine
Magnetic resonance imaging utilizes aperture synthesis – first an astronomical technique and now a medical technique.
Astronomy struggles to see increasingly faint objects; Medicine struggles to see things obscured within the human body.
— Aperture synthesis — the process of combining data from multiple telescopes to produce a single image seemingly created from a telescope the size of the entire collection — first developed by a radio astronomer has been used for multiple medical imaging tools, including CAT scanners and MRIs.
— Building space-based telescopes requires an extremely clean environment in order to avoid dust particles from obscuring the mirrors or instruments. Similar methods and instruments are now used in hospitals and pharmaceutical labs.
International Collaboration
— Collaboration also inspires competition. The Space Race — a competition between the Soviet Union and the United States for supremacy in space exploration — landed Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
— Astronomy is a collaborative effort. In 1887 astronomers from around the world pooled their telescope images in order to create the first map of the entire sky. Today, astronomers travel around the globe to attend conferences, learn from one another, and utilize telescopes elsewhere.
Everyday Life
— Airports utilize advances in technology designed for astronomy. X-ray observatory technology is used in X-ray luggage belts. A gas chromatograph — an instrument designed for a Mars mission — is used to analyze luggage for explosives.
— Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” has sold over 10 million copies. Carl Sagan’s television series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” has been watched in over 60 countries.
Humankind
“Perhaps the most important reason to study astronomy is that astronomy seeks to satisfy our fundamental curiosity about the world we live in, and answer the ‘big’ questions,” Dr. Rosenberg told Universe Today. “How was the universe created? Where did we come from? Are there other intelligent life forms?”
Every advance in astronomy moves society closer to being able to answer these questions. With advanced technology — increasingly complex CCDs and larger ground- and space-based telescopes — we have peered into the distant, early universe, we have searched for habitable worlds, and we have come to the conclusion that we, ourselves, are stardust.
“Astronomy constantly reminds people of two seemingly contradictory things. First that the universe is infinite and we are of but the tiniest fraction of importance. And Second that life is rare and precious. A home as beautiful and unique as earth does not come often. We must protect it.”
An upcoming version of this paper will not only cover the tangible aspects of astronomy discussed here, but also the intangible aspects of astronomy.
The paper has been accepted has been published on the International Astronomical Union website and is available for download here.
This article was originally written in 2010, but we’ve now updated it and added this spiffy new video.
As you probably know, the Earth is rotating on its axis. This gives us day and night. Of course it’s impossible, but what would happen if the Earth stopped spinning? Remember, this isn’t possible, it can’t happen, so don’t worry.
Everything would be launched in a ballistic trajectory sideways
The first thing to think about is the momentum of everything on the surface of the Earth. You’re held down by gravity and you’re whizzing through space at a rotational velocity of 1,674.4 km/h (at the equator). You can’t feel it because of momentum. Just like how you can’t feel that you’re moving in a car going down the highway. But you feel the effects when you stop, or get into an accident. And so, if the Earth suddenly stopped spinning, everything on the surface of the Earth at the equator would suddenly be moving at more than 1,600 km/hour sideways. The escape velocity of Earth is about 40,000 km/hour, so that isn’t enough to fly off into space; but it would cause some horrible damage as everything flew in a ballistic trajectory sideways. Imagine the oceans sloshing sideways at 1,600 km/hour.
The rotational velocity of the Earth decreases as you head away from the equator, towards the poles. So as you got further away from the equator, your speed would decrease. If you were standing right on the north or south pole, you’d barely even feel it.
A day would last 365 days
The next problem is that day and night wouldn’t work the same any more. Right now the Earth is rotating on its axis, returning the Sun to the same position every 24 hours. But if the Earth stopped spinning, it would then take 365 days for the Sun to move through the sky and return to the same position. Half of the Earth would be baked for half a year, while the other hemisphere was in darkness. It would get very hot on the sunny side, and very cold in the shadowed side. You can imagine how that would be devastating to plants and animals. We get a hint of this at the poles, where you can experience weeks of permanent night and then weeks of permanent day. But imagine 6 months of night, followed by 6 months of day.
The Earth would become a perfect sphere
This might seem minor compared to the other catastrophes, but the Earth would become an almost perfect sphere. The Earth is currently rotating on its axis, completing one turn approximately every 24 hours. This rotational velocity causes the Earth to bulge out around its equator, turning our planet into an oblate spheroid (a flattened ball). Without this spin, gravity would be able to pull the Earth into a nice perfect sphere. This sounds interesting and probably harmless, but it’s actually a *big* problem. Because of the Earth’s bulge in the middle, the oceans are held out at the equator by 8 km. On perfect sphere Earth, the world’s oceans would redistribute, flooding many regions of the planet with an immense volume of water. We’d end up with a single continent around the middle of the planet, with oceans surrounding the north and south poles.
The Earth would no longer be tilted
The Earth’s tilt is defined by how the planet is rotating compared to the Sun. This axis of rotation defines the Earth’s seasons. But without any rotation, the concept doesn’t make sense any more. There’s still a north pole of the planet, where the radiation from the Sun is at its lowest angle, and an equator, where the light hits most directly. But there would no longer be seasons.
Pictures of asteroid P/2013 P5 taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)
A lawn sprinkler in space. That’s one of the descriptions NASA has for the curious P/2013 P5, which is spewing not one, not two, but six comet-like tails at the same time.
“We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it,” stated David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles, who led the research. “Even more amazing, its tail structures change 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.”
UCLA described the asteroid as a “weird and freakish object” in its own press release.
The mystery started when astronomers spotted a really blotchy thing in space Aug. 27 with the Pan-STARRS survey telescope in Hawaii. The Hubble Space Telescope then swung over to take a look on Sept. 10, revealing all these tails of debris flying off the asteroid.
Pan-STARRS PS1 Observatory just before sunrise on Haleakala, Maui. Credit: Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophyiscs
It appears, scientists say, that the asteroid is rotating so quickly that it is ripping its very surface apart. They’ve ruled out a collision because the dust leaves in spurts; calculations by team member Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Lindau, Germany estimated this happened on April 15, July 18, July 24, Aug. 8, Aug. 26 and Sept. 4.
Once the dust gets loose, the sun’s continuous stream of particles then pushes the debris into these extraordinary tails. It’s also possible that this “radiation pressure” contributed to the asteroid’s high spin rate. It appears the team is looking to find more of these objects to see if this is a way that smaller asteroids commonly fall apart.
“In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more,” Jewitt stated. “This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come.”
The research appeared in Astrophysical Journal Letters and is also available in prepublished form on Arxiv.
