Rosetta image of the asteroid P/2010 A2 The asteroid P/2010 A2
as seen by the OSIRIS Narrow Angle Camera on board the Rosetta
spacecraft. Originally suspected to be a main belt comet, this
bizarre object is in fact the remnant of an asteroid collision
that occurred around 10 February 2009, and the dust trail is
debris from the impact. The impact resulted in the ejection of
dust and led, initially, to the formation of a moderately-sized
cloud around the nucleus; after a year, the Sun's gravity and
radiation pressure contributed to spreading it to a more
pronounced, and thus observable, extent. The wide-field frame
(on the left side) has a size of 2.2 degrees on a side, while
the close up (on the right side) is 200 arc-seconds on a side.
The halo-like features in correspondence to the bright stars are
due to internal reflections within the OSIRIS camera. The
picture was taken on 16 March 2010.