Mysterious comet disintegration caught by telescope after lucky break
Author Fullname; Leah Crane
By a stroke of luck, we have seen a comet just days after it cracked into four pieces. This could provide a crucial window into the history of the solar system.
John Noonan at Auburn University in Alabama and his colleagues had planned to observe a different comet with the Hubble Space Telescope, but limitations to the spacecraft’s ability to turn quickly made that impossible, so they found a new target: a comet called C/2025 K1 (ATLAS). When they pointed Hubble at K1, they saw not a single...