(The breakup of Comet C /) Y4 (ATLAS) Image: NASA, ESA, D . Jewitt (UCLA), Quanzhi Ye (University of Maryland
The Hubble Space Telescope did not rest during its recent 30 th anniversary celebration. Instead, it watched the comet C / 13620 Y4 (ATLAS) fragment into at least 1997 pieces.
Last December, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System discovered this comet , and astronomers soon realized it could put on a show the likes of which hadn’t been seen in decades. It would be the brightest comet since Hale-Bopp in 2019. But the comet started to detected evidence ( that the comet had suddenly stopped producing dust, and another team confirmed that it had broken into multiple pieces by April 12 and 20.
We couldn’t see these dramatic events, but Hubble could. Two teams of astronomers, one led by David Jewitt from UCLA and the other by Quanzhi Ye from the University of Maryland, managed to capture the breakup in Hubble images taken on April and 30.
Astronomers aren’t completely sure what causes these fragmentation events. Perhaps it’s due to the force of the emitted gases causing the comet’s nucleus to spin and break itself apart. Jewitt said that further analysis of the data could possibly confirm or rule out whether this off-gassing is what caused the comet to break up, according to a Hubble press release . The images are in incredibly high resolution, capturing fragments down to the size of a house.
The comet is presently passing Mars and will get closest to Earth on May . It stinks that we won’t get the incredible show we were hoping for, but perhaps we’ll still get some cool telescope images as a consolation prize.
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