Asteroid P 2010 A2
by Weston Westmoreland
Title
Asteroid P 2010 A2
Artist
Weston Westmoreland
Medium
Photograph - Photograph
Description
The comet-like asteroid P/2010 A2, enhanced.
P/2010 A2 is a small Solar System body that displayed characteristics of both an asteroid and a comet, and was initially given a cometary designation. Because it has the orbit of a main-belt asteroid and showed the tail of a comet, it was listed as a main-belt comet. But within a month of discovery, an analysis of images by the Hubble telescope suggested that its tail was generated by dust and gravel resulting from a recent head-on collision between asteroids rather than from sublimation of cometary ice. This was the first time a small-body collision had been observed. The position of the nucleus was remarkable for being offset from the axis of the tail and outside of the dust halo, a situation never before seen in a comet. The tail is created by millimeter-sized particles being pushed back by solar radiation pressure.
Original image by NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA), text from Wikipedia. Image enhancements and post processing by Weston Westmoreland.
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Uploaded
April 1st, 2017
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