Illusion of Tail
It’s not a comet
The Hubble Space Telscope captures aftermath of asteroid collision in this series of photos taken between January and May 2010
Check out the X, marking the spot of an asteroid collision in this new Hubble Space Telescope photo. "When I saw the Hubble image I knew it was something special," said researcher Jessica Agarwal, a European Space Agency astronomer in the Netherlands. Astronomers suspect a rock maybe 10-16 feet (3-5 meters) wide slammed into a larger asteroid at speeds of about 11,200 mph (18,000 kph) with a detonation as powerful as a small atomic bomb. Such collisions are not uncommon, though they're rarely seen in real time. In fact, past collisions have spawned families of smaller asteroids that astronomers can identify. And sometimes the fragments reach Earth.
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