NASA asteroid: See incredible moment spinning asteroid COMES APART in flash of light
Astronomers hope Hubble’s discovery can help scientists learn more about the makeup of asteroids without having to send costly probes to their surface.
Olivier Hainaut of the European Southern Observatory in Germany, explained: “We didn’t have to go to Gault. We just had to look at the image of the streamers, and we can see all of the dust grains well-sorted by size.
“All the large grains, about the size of sand particles, are close to the object and the smallest grains, about the size of flour grains, are the farthest away because they are being pushed fastest by pressure from sunlight.”
The longest of Asteroid Gault’s two tails is estimated to stretch over 500,000 miles (800,000km) and measures about 3,000 miles (4,800km) in width.
The trail was first observed on January 5, 2019, by the NASA-supported Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Hawaii.
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