Page 16 September 28, 2017 EL SEGUNDO HERALD
Looking Up
Comet or Asteroid? Hubble Discovers That a Unique Object Is a Binary
Press Release from Space Telescope
Science Institute, Provided by Bob Eklund
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope helped
an international team of astronomers find
that an unusual object in the asteroid belt
is, in fact, two asteroids orbiting each other
that have comet-like features. These include
a bright halo of material, called a coma, and
a long tail of dust.
Hubble was used to image the asteroid,
designated 300163 (2006 VW139), in September
2016 just before the asteroid made its
closest approach to the Sun. Hubble’s crisp
images revealed that it was actually not one,
but two asteroids of almost the same mass
and size, orbiting each other at a distance
of 60 miles.
Asteroid 300163 (2006 VW139) was discovered
by Spacewatch in November 2006
and then the possible cometary activity was
seen in November 2011 by Pan-STARRS.
Both Spacewatch and Pan-STARRS are
asteroid survey projects of NASA’s Near
Earth Object Observations Program. After the
Pan-STARRS observations it was also given
a comet designation of 288P. This makes the
object the first known binary asteroid that is
also classified as a main-belt comet.
The more recent Hubble observations
revealed ongoing activity in the binary system.
“We detected strong indications for the
sublimation of water ice due to the increased
solar heating — similar to how the tail of
a comet is created,” explained team leader
Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute
for Solar System Research, Germany.
The combined features of the binary asteroid—
wide separation, near-equal component
size, high eccentricity orbit, and comet-like
activity—also make it unique among the
few known binary asteroids that have a
wide separation. Understanding its origin
and evolution may provide new insights into
the early days of the solar system. Main-belt
comets may help to answer how water came
to a bone-dry Earth billions of years ago.
The team estimates that 2006 VW139/288P
has existed as a binary system only for about
5,000 years. The most probable formation
scenario is a breakup due to fast rotation.
After that, the two fragments may have
been moved further apart by the effects of
ice sublimation, which would give a tiny
push to an asteroid in one direction as water
molecules are ejected in the other direction.
The fact that 2006 VW139/288P is so different
from all other known binary asteroids
raises some questions about how common
such systems are in the asteroid belt. “We
need more theoretical and observational
work, as well as more objects similar to this
object, to find an answer to this question,”
concluded Agarwal.
The research is presented in a paper, to be
published in the journal Nature this week.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project
of international cooperation between NASA
and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,
Maryland, manages the telescope. The Space
Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore,
Maryland, conducts Hubble science
operations. STScI is operated for NASA by
the Association of Universities for Research
in Astronomy, Inc., in Washington, D.C. •
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