NASA announced Wednesday. <\/a><\/p>\nThe blue-hued space shards were seen surrounded by a \u201cfuzzy envelope of gas and dust\u201d that envelops the comet\u2019s icy nucleus in the ground-breaking telescopic images.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Hubble telescope captured comet K1 fragmenting into at least four pieces between Nov. 8 and Nov. 10. NASA<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes the best science happens by accident,\u201d co-investigator John Noonan, a research professor in the\u00a0Department of Physics\u00a0at Auburn University in Alabama, said in a statement<\/p>\n
\u201cThis comet got observed because our original comet was not viewable due to some new technical constraints after we won our proposal. We had to find a new target \u2014 and right when we observed it, it happened to break apart, which is the slimmest of slim chances.\u201d<\/p>\n
The images were taken just a month after K1, which is roughly five miles long, made its closest approach to the sun \u2014 at roughly one-third the distance the Earth is from the life-sustaining star.<\/p>\n
During the phenomenon, a comet experiences intense heating and is at maximum stress. Comets like K1 tend to break apart after entering this phase, experts explained.<\/p>\n
The blue-hued space shards were seen surrounded by a \u201cfuzzy envelope of gas and dust\u201d that envelops the comet\u2019s icy nucleus in the ground-breaking telescope images. NASA<\/p>\n
\u201cThe chance of that happening while Hubble watched is extraordinarily minuscule,\u201d NASA wrote in a statement. <\/p>\n
Noonan had no clue that K1 was fragmenting until he viewed the telescope\u2019s miraculous images a day later. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile I was taking an initial look at the data, I saw that there were four comets in those images when we only proposed to look at one,\u201d said Noonan. \u201cSo we knew this was something really, really special.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is \u201cvery difficult\u201d to schedule Hubble to see a comet shattering, researchers added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe irony is now we\u2019re just studying a regular comet, and it crumbles in front of our eyes,\u201d principal investigator and professor in Auburn University\u2019s Department of Physics, Dennis Bodewits, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
It is \u201cvery difficult\u201d to schedule Hubble to see a comet shattering, researchers said. NASA<\/p>\n
\u201cComets are leftovers of the era of solar system formation, so they\u2019re made of \u2018old stuff\u2019\u2014the primordial materials that made our solar system.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they are not pristine\u2014they\u2019ve been heated; they\u2019ve been irradiated by the Sun and by cosmic rays. So, when looking at a comet\u2019s composition, the question we always have is, \u2018Is this a primitive property or is this due to evolution?\u2019 By cracking open a comet, you can see the ancient material that has not been processed.\u201d<\/p>\n
K1 is now a collection of fragments floating roughly 250 million miles away from Earth in the constellation Pisces. It is not likely to return, researchers said. <\/p>\n
The announcement comes as a rare daytime meteor streaked across the sky<\/a> in northeast Ohio this week, creating a massive boom that was heard as far away as New York.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASA\u2019s Hubble telescope captured an \u201cextraordinarily\u201d rare moment of a comet exploding into fragments, the space agency said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":534320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[32021,12654,718,79,193,194],"class_list":["post-534319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-comets","tag-hubble-space-telescope","tag-nasa","tag-science","tag-space","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}