Hubble captures aftermath of asteroid collision This series of
images taken by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 clearly shows the
slow evolution of the debris coming from asteroid P/2010 A2,
which is thought to be due to a collision with a smaller
asteroid. When astronomers first spotted the unusual X shape,
they assumed that they were observing the immediate aftermath of
an impact. However, the slower than anticipated rate of change
in the appearance of the debris suggests that the collision in
fact took place about a year earlier than the first
observations. These seven exposures were taken between January
and May 2010 while the asteroid was rapidly receding from Earth.
As the asteroid gets further away from us, we are able to see
more of its comet-like tail in each subsequent frame. In the top
picture, the portion of the tail we see is around 50 000
kilometres long. In the bottom picture, we see around 85 000
kilometres. For all images, the field of view remains about 75
arcseconds across. The images were take