The comet, an aggregate of primordial ice and dust, has had a rather dull life, spending 4.5 billion years in a vast, icy region of our solar called the Oort cloud, Jewitt said. “I don’t know whether this is because the individual pieces are flashing on and off as they reflect sunlight, acting like twinkling lights on a Christmas tree, or because different fragments appear on different days.” Jewitt said the appearance of the comet’s fragments changed substantially from April 20 to April 23, when the images were captured. “Breakup, although still not well understood, could be the main destructive process for comets,” said Jewitt, a UCLA professor of planetary science and astronomy and leader of one of two research teams that photographed and analyzed the comet. Images from the Hubble are giving astronomers a look in unprecedented detail at the comet’s pieces, which may yield new clues about the breakup. The observation provides evidence that comet fragmentation is probably common, and may even be the dominant mechanism by which the solid, icy nuclei of comets die. Because comets’ deaths tend to occur unpredictably, reliable observations of their demise are rare, and astronomers are largely uncertain about what causes them to fragment.Ĭomets are icy bodies thought to be fragments left behind when planets form in the outer parts of planetary systems. Jewitt estimated that many of the fragments are approximately the size of a house. The images are the sharpest views of the death of the fragile comet, called C/2019 Y4. In images captured in recent days by the Hubble Space Telescope, UCLA professor David Jewitt observed a comet breaking into more than two dozen fragments.
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