Hubble Takes Close-up Look at Disintegrating Comet
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/hubble-takes-close-up-look-at-disintegrating-comet
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured one of the sharpest, most detailed observations of a comet breaking apart,
which occurred 67 million miles from Earth.
In a series of images taken over a three-day span in January 2016, Hubble revealed 25 building-size blocks made of
a mixture of ice and dust that are drifting away from the comet at a leisurely pace, about the walking speed of an adult.
The observations suggest that the roughly 4.5-billion-year-old comet, named 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, or Comet 332P, may be
spinning so fast that material is ejected from its surface. The resulting debris is now scattered along a 3,000-mile-long
trail, larger than the width of the continental U.S.
These observations provide insight into the volatile behavior of comets as they approach the sun and begin to vaporize,
unleashing dynamical forces. Comet 332P was 150 million miles from the sun, slightly beyond the orbit of Mars,
when Hubble spotted the breakup.
