These seven Hubble Space Telescope images, taken over a five-month period, show the odd-shaped debris from a collision between two asteroids.
The Hubble images, taken from January to May 2010 with Wide Field Camera 3, reveal a point-like object about 400 feet (120 meters) wide, with a long, flowing dust tail behind a never-before-seen X pattern. Particle sizes in the tail are estimated to vary from about 1/25th of an inch (a millimeter) to an inch (2.5 centimeters) in diameter. The tail contains enough dust to make a ball 65 feet (20 meters) wide, most of it blown out of the bigger body by the impact-caused explosion.
The asteroid debris, dubbed P/2010 A2, appears to be shrinking in each successive image because Earth's faster orbit is carrying the planet away from the object. Between January and May, Earth rotated more than 100 million miles away from the debris field. During the observations, the X pattern remained intact.
P/2010 A2 was found cruising around the asteroid belt, a reservoir of millions of rocky bodies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The images were taken in visible light and artificially colored blue.
Credits
Illustration: NASA, ESA, and Z. Levay (STScI);Science: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA)
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Asteroid P/2010 A2 |
| Object Description | Asteroid Belt Impact Object |
| Distance | 1.099 AU (102 million mi, 164 million km) - 2.392 AU (222 million mi, 358 million km) |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The image was created from Hubble data from proposals , , and : D. Jewitt (UCLA), H. Weaver (JPL/APL), M. Drahus (UCLA), and M. Mutchler (STScI). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | 2010: Jan. 25, Jan. 29, Feb. 22, Mar. 12, Apr. 2, Apr. 19, May 8, and May 29 |
| Filters | F606W (V) |
| About The Image | |
| Color Info | This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly varying brightness in an image. |
| Compass Image |  |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
