Archivo de imágenes de Hubble
Cometa 252P/LINEAR (4 de abril de 2016)
This sequence of images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows Comet 252P/LINEAR as it passed by Earth. The visit was one of the closest encounters between a comet and our planet.The images were taken on April 4, 2016, roughly two weeks after the icy visitor made its closes...
- Fecha
- Jan 1, 2016
- Misión
- Hubble Space Telescope
- ID de archivo
- hubblesite-images-2016-14-3728-image
This sequence of images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows Comet 252P/LINEAR as it passed by Earth. The visit was one of the closest encounters between a comet and our planet.
The images were taken on April 4, 2016, roughly two weeks after the icy visitor made its closest approach to Earth on March 21. The comet traveled within 3.3 million miles of Earth, or about 14 times the distance between our planet and the moon. These observations also represent the closest celestial object Hubble has observed, other than the moon.
The images reveal a narrow, well-defined jet of dust ejected by the comet's icy, fragile nucleus. The nucleus is too small for Hubble to resolve. Astronomers estimate that it is less than one mile across. A comet produces jets of material as it travels close to the sun in its orbit. Sunlight warms ices in a comet's nucleus, resulting in large amounts of dust and gas being ejected, sometimes in the form of jets. The jet in the Hubble images is illuminated by sunlight.
The jet also appears to change direction in the images, which is evidence that the comet's nucleus is spinning. The spinning nucleus makes the jet appear to rotate like the water jet from a rotating lawn sprinkler. The images underscore the dynamics and volatility of a comet's fragile nucleus.
Comet 252P/LINEAR is traveling away from Earth and the sun; its orbit will bring it back to the inner solar system in 2021, but not anywhere close to Earth.
These visible-light images were taken with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and J.-Y. Li (Planetary Science Institute)Detalles de la imagen
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Comet 252P/LINEAR |
| Object Description | Comet |
| Distance | At the time of the Hubble observations on April 4, 2016, Comet 252P/LINEAR was 0.093 astronomical unit (8.6 million miles or 14 million kilometers) from Earth. The sun-comet distance on that date was 1.037 astronomical units (96 million miles or 155 million kilometers). At closest approach on March 21, 2016, the comet was 0.036 astronomical unit (3.3 million miles or 5.4 million kilometers) from Earth. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The images were created from Hubble data from proposal : J.-Y. Li and N. Samarasinha (Planetary Science Institute), M. Kelley (University of Maryland), M. Mutchler (STScI), and D. Farnocchia (Jet Propulsion Laboratory). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | April 4, 2016 |
| Filters | F625W (SDSS r) |
| 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. |
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Fuente
La imagen y el material de referencia se acreditan al archivo oficial de la misión enlazado a continuación.
Ver en NASA.gov