Astronomy Picture of the Day -- The Unexpected Tails of Asteroid P5

NASA ^ | November 12, 2013 | (see photo credit)

[SunkenCiv]

Explanation: What is happening to asteroid P/2013 P5? No one is sure. For reasons unknown, the asteroid is now sporting not one but six discernible tails. The above images were taken two months ago by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and show the rapidly changing dust streams. It is not even known when P5 began displaying such unusual tails. Were the main belt asteroid struck by a large meteor, it would be expected to sport a single dust tail. Possible explanations include that light pressure from the Sun is causing the asteroid to rotate increasingly rapidly, which in turn causes pools of previously gravity-bound dust to spin off. Future observations should better indicate how P5 and its dust plumes are evolving and so provide more clues to its nature -- and to how many similar asteroids might exist.

[SunkenCiv]

[Credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Jewitt (UCLA) et al.]

[SunkenCiv]

11/12/13

The Big One

Earlier topics about this six-tailed asteroid:

• Strange Space Object Stumps Astronomers; Appears to be Asteroid but Has Six Comet-Like Tails
• Astronomers 'Dumbfounded' by Six-Tailed Asteroid
• Hubble spots strange asteroid with 6 tails of dust
• Freakish Asteroid Has Six Tails, Sheds Stuff Into Space

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[SunkenCiv]

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[Kirkwood]

Not everything swept up in the asteroid belt is an asteroid. Some will be captured comets.

[mikrofon]

"Tails Of The Unexpected*"

[Talisker]

Not everything swept up in the asteroid belt is an asteroid. Some will be captured comets.

And some won't be captured comets.

[Swordmaker]

Ask any Electric Universe cosmologist. They are not surprised. Not at all. In fact, this is predicted under the Electric Universe model. Comets and Asteroids are the same thing. . . differing only in their orbits and the electric charges they amass and then discharge.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)