Space-Debris Field Attributed to Asteroid Collision

Astronomers strongly believe that collisions among space rocks are fairly common, and also that these events may have played a significant role in the development of planets in the early stages of their respective solar systems. But, until now, no such space-based collision, or whatever resulted from one, was imaged. All of this changed when experts managed to identify a field of space debris, which they say must have been produced by two asteroids slamming into each other. The recent observations were conducted using the renewed Hubble Space Telescope, Space reports.

The structure was the target of Hubble observations on January 25 and 29, and was given the catchy designation P/2010 A2. It resembles a comet in appearance, save from the fact that the pieces of debris that make it up are shaped like an X. Filament-like shapes inside its nucleus also disprove the comet hypothesis. “This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets,” University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) expert David Jewitt, who has also been the leader of the new study, explains.

“The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies,” the scientist goes on to say. According to preliminary calculations, it would appear that the two celestial bodies slammed into each other at an average velocity of more than 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers) per hour. The entire structure is about 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter, and what really puzzled the researchers was the fact that the nucleus appeared to be lying well beyond its own dust halo.

This is something that has never before been seen in a comet, astronomers add. “If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight,” Jewitt says. The peculiar space object can be found within our solar system, orbiting in the main asteroid belt that covers the distance between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The new images were captured using Hubble's recently refurbished Wide Field Camera 3.