Environment

NASA Photographs Asteroid Collision at 11,000 Miles per Hour

by Blaine Metzgar | February 2, 2010 at 05:04 pm

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By complete coincidence NASA managed to capture two asteroids colliding into one another on camera. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 managed to capture the exact moment two asteroids smashed into eachother some 90 million miles away from earth.

As the photographs show, the collision left behind an X-shaped pattern of particles followed by the streaking tails of the asteroids; astonomers say it is unlike anything they have ever seen before.

"This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets," said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies."

Scientists believe the collision occurred at 11,000 miles per hour, the average speed at which asteroids travel.

Of the two asteroids, only one, named P/2010 A2, endured the impact while the other disintigrated behind it forming a luminous tail.