Hubble Telescope captures Comet breaking apart read more at here www.spinonews.com/index.php/item/896-hubble-telescope-captures-comet-breaking-up

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.

A Comet named 332P/Ikeya-Murakami (aka Comet 332P) was captured by Hubble Telescope. In a series of images taken over 3 days in January 2016, Hubble showed 25 fragments consisting of a mixture of ice and dust that are drifting away from the comet at a pace equivalent to the walking speed of an adult.

 

Image Credits: NASA

The images propose that the roughly 4.5-billion-year-old comet, named 332P/Ikeya-Murakami, or Comet 332P, may be spinning so fast that material is emitted from its surface. The resulting debris is now scattered along a 3,000-mile-long trail, larger than the width of the continental United States.

Astronomers say these observations provide insights into the volatile behavior of comets as they approach the sun and begin to vaporize.

The researchers determine that comet 332P contains ample mass for 25 more outbursts. “If the comet has an episode every six years, the equivalent of one orbit around the Sun, then it will be gone in 150 years,” Jewitt says. “It’s just the blink of an eye, astronomically speaking. The trip to the inner Solar System has doomed it.”

The comet is much smaller than astronomers thought, measuring only 1,600 feet across, about the length of five football fields. 

Comet 332P was discovered in November 2010, after it surged in brightness and was spotted by two Japanese astronomers.