© Spacewatch/U of Arizona
There's a newly discovered object that superficially looks like a comet but lives among the asteroids.
The distinction? Comets swoop along elliptical orbits close in to the sun and grow long gaseous and dusty tails as ices sublimate off their solid nucleus and release dust. But asteroids are mostly in more circular orbits and are not normally expected to be as volatile as comets.
The puzzling object was discovered on January 6 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey. The object appears to be in an orbit inside the main asteroid belt -- not a place where comets dwell. A member of the asteroid belt has never before been seen erupting a "tail."
One possibility is that we are witnessing a never-before-seen collision between two asteroids that ejected a dust plume.
Another possibility is that an asteroid containing ices experienced a short-lived outburst. Or, a fragile icy and stony nucleus simply came unglued and the remnants are being scattered by the pressure of the solar wind.
© Spacewatch/U of Arizona
(Or perhaps extraterrestrials are playing a real version of the popular 1980's arcade game Asteroids.) No doubt there will be many more observations of this strange object in the near future, so stay tuned.
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