Aftermath of Asteroid Collision Caught on Camera

Somewhere between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, a peculiar object with the even more peculiar-sounding name of P/2010 A2 was recently observed cruising through an asteroid belt in a way that astronomers found, well, peculiar.

Judging from the debris in its tail, P/2010 A2 was thought at first to be a comet. But astronomers studying the object through the Hubble Space Telescope subsequently changed their minds, suggesting that what they'd been looking at was an asteroid. The asteroid with a comet-like tail explanation has now been reinforced by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft. UCLA astronomer David Jewitt, who authored one of the two papers on the topic noted in an interview with Nature News the rarity of the event, adding that this marked the first time that astronomers have actually observed an asteroid being disrupted.

The finding was particularly excited to scientists searching for evidence that would shed more light on the origins of dust found in the solar system. The thinking is that the asteroid got diverted from its usual orbit sometime early in 2009.

"I knew that this was an object the likes of which we hadn't seen before," he said.

The researchers led by Jewitt posit that the tail might have resulted from a collision with a smaller asteroid. (A competing explanation suggests it might be due to solar radiation.) A second paper on the debris trail lines up behind the asteroid collision scenario.