light-headed asteroid , tails are for comets ! Around five month ago , an asteroid call up P/2013 P5 was seen to be kicking off debris , making it look like it had a tooshie like a comet . Use of more elaborate imaging would show that the asteroid actually has an unprecedented six tails .
In August , researcher had noticed P/2013 P5 , an asteroid with a lens nucleus 1400 groundwork ( 427 meter ) long , looked passably blurred through thePanoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System ( Pan - STARRS ) . Traditionally , asteroids appear as a sharp level of luminousness , and this anomaly pique the rarity of the investigator . They figured that it might have start rotating passing rapidly , make it to kvetch off some of its Earth’s surface dust and calculate like a comet .
On September 10 , the team used the Hubble Space Telescope to get more elaborate images of the oddball asteroid . The results whole dumbfounded the researchers : the asteroid hadsixtailsthat jut out in all directions , like spokes on a bike wheel ! Even more amazing was the fact that when the team search at it again less than two weeks later , the tails appear whole different .
After extensive analysis , it was determined that the tails are most potential the byproduct from six different dust - projection effect that were pulled out like white tie and tails by solar radiation pressure . That atmospheric pressure is also believe to be what cause the asteroid to begin twirl so quickly in the first stead , in a phenomenon known as irradiation torque . If an asteroid is spinning too fast , its small amount of gravity is not enough to hold itself together and the dust goes flying off . Because the dust practice does not indicate that a lot of cloth was ejected from the asteroid at once , the researchers are presently discounting the idea that these tails are the ware of a collision . The results were published inAstrophysical Journal Letters .
So far , only a small percentage of its mass has been molt off into the tails , but this could be the beginning of the remainder for the asteroid . Future analysis will show if the dust is being turf out around the asteroid ’s equator , which will be the good grounds that the asteroid is in the process of a rotational detachment .
While this is the first six - tailed asteroid that has ever been document , research worker are confident that if there is one , there are probably many more waiting to be discovered .
