Astronomers analyzing debris from a comet that broke apart last summer spied pieces as small as smoke-sized particles and as large as football-field-sized fragments. But it's the material they didn't see that has aroused their curiosity. Tracking the doomed comet, named LINEAR, the Hubble telescope and the Very Large Telescope in Chile found tiny particles that made up the 2,000-mile-long dust tail and 16 large fragments, some as wide as 330 feet. But the telescopes didn't detect any intermediate-sized pieces. If they exist, then the fundamental building blocks that comprised LINEAR's nucleus may be somewhat smaller than current theories suggest.
The Hubble picture shows that that LINEAR's nucleus has been reduced to a shower of glowing "mini-comets" resembling the fiery fragments from an exploding aerial firework. This picture was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 5, 2000, when the comet was at a distance of 64 million miles (102 million kilometers) from Earth.
Credits
NASA and Hal Weaver (The Johns Hopkins University)| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Comet LINEAR; C/1999 S4; LINEARLincoln Laboratory Near-Earth Asteroid Research |
| Object Description | Comet |
| Distance | The comet's distance to the Sun at closest approach was 71 million miles (114 million km). |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | Principal Astronomers: Comet LINEAR investigation team: H. Weaver and P. Feldman (JHU), M. A'Hearn (Univ. of Maryland), C. Arpigny (Liege Univ.), J. Bauer (Univ. of Hawaii), M. Combi (Univ. of Michigan), J. Davies (Joint Astronomy Centre), M. Festou (Observatoire Midi-Pyrenees), M. Keesey (JPL), P. Lamy (Laboratoire d'Astronomie Spatiale), C. Lisse (STScI), B. Marsden (SAO), K. Meech (Univ. of Hawaii), Z. Sekanina (JPL) , I. Toth (Konkoly Observatory) , G.-P. Tozzi (Arcetri Observatory), D. Yeomans (JPL). |
| Instrument | HST>WFPC2 and HST>STIS |
| Exposure Dates | July and August 2000, Exposure Time: ~ 2 hours |
| Filters | WFPC2: F675W (R) STIS: F28X50LP |
| 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. |
