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Credit & Copyright: Les Makes Observatory,
J. Berthier, F. Vachier, A. Klotz, P. Thierry, T. Santana-Ros,
ESA
NEOCC,
D. Föhring, E. Petrescu, M. Micheli
Explanation:
What happens if you crash a spaceship into an asteroid?
In the case of
NASA's
DART
spaceship and the small asteroid
Dimorphos,
as happened last week, you get
quite a plume.
The goal of the planned impact was
planetary protection --
to show that the path of an asteroid can be
slightly altered,
so that, if done right, a big space rock will
miss the Earth.
The high brightness of the plume, though, was
unexpected by many, and what it means remains a topic of research.
One possibility is that 170-meter wide
Dimorphos is primarily a
rubble pile asteroid and the collision dispersed
some of the rubble in the pile.
The
featured time-lapse video covers about 20 minutes and was taken from the
Les Makes Observatory on
France's
Reunion
Island,
off the southeast coast of southern Africa.
One of
many Earth-based observatories
following the impact,
the initial dot is primarily Dimorphos's larger companion: asteroid Didymos.
Most recently, images show that the Didymos - Dimorphos system has
developed
comet-like tails.
DART Impact on Dimorphos:
Notable images submitted to APOD
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NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: asteroid
Publications with words: asteroid
See also: