The morphology of asteroid P/2010 A2
Date: 13 October 2010
Satellite: Hubble Space Telescope
Depicts: P/2010 A2
Copyright: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)
A Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid P/2010 A2, taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
The picture highlights the object's peculiar morphology: a long and thin tail, with parallel sides, which is slightly detached from the nucleus (the bright dot visible in the inset) and comprises a curiously X-shaped filamentary structure.
These and further observations confirmed that this bizarre object is the remnant of an asteroid collision that occurred around 10 February 2009.
The picture was taken on 29 January 2010.
Last Update: 1 September 2019