For the first clip , astronomers have observe an active asteroid transfer colour in real metre from blood-red to blue in the near - infrared spectrum as it undergo ego - destruction more than 322 million klick ( 200 million miles ) away from Earth .
An out - of - this - macrocosm persona enchant by the Hubble Space Telescope shows the asteroid6478 Gaultwith two narrow tail and bright streaking star in the ground in the asteroid whang between Mars and Jupiter . scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology ( MIT ) say this character of behavior from an asteroid is typical of comets but implausibly rarified for their rocky asteroid cousins .
“ That was a very large surprise , ” enjoin Michael Marsset , a postdoc in MIT ’s Department of Earth , Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences , in astatement . “ We mean we have witnessed the asteroid losing its reddish debris to outer space , and we are seeing the asteroid ’s underlying , invigorated bluish layers . ”
Measuring about 4 klick ( 2.5 sea mile ) astray , Gaultis mainly made up of a dry , stony material called silicate . It is believed that the colour switch is due to detritus throw away off the major planet as the asteroid becomes unstable . Typically , as sunshine ignite an asteroid , infrared radiation syndrome take to the woods from its surface with angular momentum , which make the asteroid to birl quicker and faster . As this happen , the target becomes unstable and landslides unloosen dust and dust into outer space . scientist are n’t precisely certain why the asteroid is act like a comet . Asteroids are mostly made of metals and rocky materials whereas comets contain dust and shabu that typically plain up their well - know tails .
“ It ’s the first sentence to my knowledge that we see a rocky body emitting rubble , a niggling bit like a comet , ” Marsset added . “ It means that believably some mechanism responsible for dust emission is different from comet and dissimilar from most other active main - belt asteroids . ”
First discovered in 1988 , an image of Gault was captured by stargazer in January . A paper describe the space objective was bring out inAstrophysical Journal Letters . estimate based on the photo suggest that the larger of the two tails assess about 805,000 km ( 500,000 miles ) long , while the shorter buns is about a one-fourth of its size . Altogether , the two in all likelihood contain ten of millions of kilograms of rubble . Gault is one of the meg of objects within this asteroid smash , yet only about 20 of them are hump to be active .
