Comet LINEAR

Esahubble_opo0114a_1024

esahubble_opo0114a May 17th, 2001

Credit: NASA/ESA and Hal Weaver (The Johns Hopkins University)

Astronomers analyzing debris from a comet that broke apart lastsummer spied pieces as small as smoke-sized particles and aslarge as football-field-sized fragments. But it's the materialthey didn't see that has aroused their curiosity. Tracking thedoomed comet, named LINEAR, the Hubble telescope and the VeryLarge Telescope in Chile found tiny particles that made up the 2,000-mile-long dust tail and 16 large fragments, some as wide as330 feet. But the telescopes didn't detect any intermediate-sized pieces. If they exist, then the fundamental building blocks that comprised LINEAR's nucleus may be somewhat smaller than currenttheories suggest. The Hubble picture shows that that LINEAR's nucleus has beenreduced to a shower of glowing "mini-comets" resembling the fiery fragments from an exploding aerial firework. This picture was takenwith Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 5, 2000, whenthe comet was at a distance of 64 million miles (102 millionkilometers) from Earth.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0114a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Comet Linear
Subject - Solar System
Interplanetary Body > Comet

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
None (None) -
Hubble (WFPC2) (R) -
Esahubble_opo0114a_1280
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ID
opo0114a
Subject Category
A.2.2  
Subject Name
Comet Linear
Credits
NASA/ESA and Hal Weaver (The Johns Hopkins University)
Release Date
2001-05-17T20:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0114a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
N/A
Facility
None, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
None, WFPC2
Color Assignment
Band
Bandpass
-, R
Central Wavelength
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
Equinox
Reference Value
Reference Dimension
Reference Pixel
Scale
Rotation
Coordinate System Projection:
Quality
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
opo0114a
Metadata Date
2003-12-09T17:17:34+01:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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