Hubble image archive
Disintegration of Asteroid P/2013 R3
This series of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals the breakup of an asteroid over a period of several months starting in late 2013. The largest fragments are up to 180 meters (200 yards) in radius, each with "tails" caused by dust lifted from their surfaces and pushed back by...
- Date
- Jan 1, 2014
- Mission
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Archive ID
- hubblesite-images-2014-15-3321-image
This series of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals the breakup of an asteroid over a period of several months starting in late 2013. The largest fragments are up to 180 meters (200 yards) in radius, each with "tails" caused by dust lifted from their surfaces and pushed back by the pressure of sunlight. The ten pieces of the asteroid drift apart slowly and show a range of breakup times, suggesting that the disintegration cannot be explained by a collision with another asteroid. One idea for the breakup is that the asteroid was accelerated by sunlight to spin at a fast enough rate to fly apart by centrifugal force. The images were taken in visible light with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (University of California, Los Angeles)Image Details
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | P/2013 R3 |
| Object Description | Disintegrating Comet/Asteroid |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description | The Hubble data are from proposal : D. Jewitt (University of California, Los Angeles), H. Weaver (JHU/APL), J. Agarwal (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research), S. Larson (University of Arizona), and M. Mutchler (STScI). |
| Instrument | HST>WFC3/UVIS |
| Exposure Dates | October 2013 - January 2014 |
| Filters | F350LP (long pass) |
| 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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Source
Image and source material are credited to the official mission archive linked below.
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