Comments on: Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision!

By: Astronomy Overload Hour - Skepticality :: Skepticality

Astronomy Overload Hour - Skepticality :: Skepticality — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:56:29 +0000

[...] by 2020. There also have been some great new images from Hubble of Pluto. Also, an asteroid collision that created an amazing impact and beautiful pictures. On February 8th we saw the first of [...]

By: mike

mike — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:05:08 +0000

what a solar system ? great pics

By: MikeWqrp

MikeWqrp — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 19:43:54 +0000

Just saying hello, hope this was the right section and that I will enjoy it here

Cheers
Mike

By: The Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010

The Top 14 Astronomy Pictures of 2010 — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 11:14:38 +0000

[...] in the astronomical community: the aftermath of a violent collision between two asteroids in space! The picture is unprecendented: an X-shaped streak of light with a dramatic 50,000-kilometer-long tail sweeping [...]

By: Randy

Randy — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:25:28 +0000

What is the bright white spot in the picture?

By: Jordan

Jordan — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 20:47:28 +0000

KLINGON WARBIRD

By: SampraS

SampraS — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:36:23 +0000

and where are the remnant of the second asteroid?

By: Timmeh!

Timmeh! — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 15:10:22 +0000

i think everyone has missed the really obvious its quite clearly a B-wing from star wars exiting lightspeed

http://www.wireless-earth.de/private/Models/images/StarWars_B_Wing_Fighter.jpg

By: Troythulu’s Nu’z « The Call of Troythulu

Troythulu’s Nu’z « The Call of Troythulu — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:31:22 +0000

[...] Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision — Worldlets in collision, provided by the Bad Astronomer with excellent photographic embiggitude, as two fairly sizable space-rocks smack into each other, something that the arguments of electric universe exponents imply either doesn’t happen or leaves no traces…whatever… [...]

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:28:40 +0000

pretty scary to imagine the earth being stung by such a big asteroid!

By: dR dMo

dR dMo — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 21:11:23 +0000

its the bat signal

By: Der A-mann

Der A-mann — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 12:55:25 +0000

Come on, look at the shape! What more proof of Planet X do we need?

By: eD

eD — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:24:26 +0000

Are there any pictures in infrared or ultraviolet?

By: Jon

Jon — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:23:57 +0000

I find some of this highly unlikely, considering the X debris cloud is what, maybe a couple miles wide? At the energy levels expected, it would be couple miles wide less than a few seconds after the impact, which would require some other theory for the long plume.

I don’t believe the long plume trail and the X mark are related to each other. The long plume trail couldn’t be generated via solar wind in any short period of time that would come about from a high energy impact.

They will need to take multiple photos over time to get an idea of the speed of the white object and the debris expansion. Anything without that is complete speculation and a finding of an asteroid collision is, at best, a guess.

By: T.E.L.

T.E.L. — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:38:09 +0000

pprivate,

If you think it’s a spacecraft, not the leftovers from an asteroid collision, then here’s your chance: Explain your reasoning. Explain what you think is spacecraft-like about it. Explain what’s so non-asteroid-collision-ish about it. Present your case, in detail.

By: pprivate

pprivate — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:13:38 +0000

This does not look like two asteroids happend to have a collision.Some one is lying.Scientist should stop peddling this trick.What it does look like though is some sort of space craft and is quiet a mystery.This mourning I saw a news commentater and a scientist talking about this on fox tv, and they sounded non smart. This is some sort of craft or a fake?,but the collision of two asteroids is highly doubtful.Some times scientist like to peddle stupid theory’s. please comment on this comment.
Thanks
Private

By: Gareth

Gareth — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:07:18 +0000

Wait – how can you say “Hubble captures picture of asteroid collision!”, when according to that well-know scientific journal, The Sun newspaper, you space-boffins are supposed to be utterly baffled by this “space UFO”?

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:42:16 +0000

I think I saw this all take place in the sky last night. I saw it around 9:15 MST in Idaho in the Eastern Sky! It was pretty large…looked as if a plane was on fire and falling to the ground. AMAZING!!!!

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:57:20 +0000

@71. Jon Hanford asks:

Any chance Cassini, MRO, Mars Express or New Horizons could image this? Any of the comet/asteroid missions?

I don’t know for sure but I strongly suspect they’d all be too far away to do so.

Cassini is orbiting Saturn & to spy anything in the asteroid belt it’d have to look near our Sun. Remember that for Saturn the planets inside its orbit (Jupiter, Mars, Earth, etc ..) will be clustering close to the Sun & never moving far away from its glare – just like Venus and Mercury are “Evening & Morning stars” only visible in or near dusk & dawn as seen from our earthly skies.

Same thing applies to NewHorizons & I’m not sure if that even has its cameras on or if they’re turned off until it gets much nearer to Pluto. (Yes, it photographed Jupiter but I think they may have turned the cameras off for a while afterwards during the years-long “cruise” to save power. Not sure whether that’s the case but think that’s plausible.)

From Martian orbit where the Mars Reconnaissence Orbiter & Mars Express are there’s the advantage of being inside the asteroid belt’s orbit so this asteroidal mess won’t be lost in the Solar glare and their also closer and their cameras are definitely working well. But still those cameras are not really designed for telescopic observations of faint & distant objects in space but rather for surveying the martian terrain close below them.

The asteroid belt is very big and this object is unlikely to be that bright so even if the MRO or Mars Express or other spaceprobe mission did manage to spot this object its very unlikely they’d get any images better than telescopes here or in Earth orbit.

Thus while its a nice thought, I don’t think its possible.

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 03:17:15 +0000

Australian media is reporting on this today – online anyhow, haven’t bought todays papers or seen them or any TV news yet – so they’ve taken a while.

One news story goes with the UFO angle at least in its headline.

However, that news report itself is reasonable & can be checked out here :

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/mp/6753969/space-ufo-baffles-scientists/

The other news item that I’ve seen on another site is more accurately & specifically headlined & its link is here :

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/1008092/x-shaped-space-object-baffles-astronomers

Neither write up is as good as the BA’s in my opinion – quibbles over those “radioactive” nuclear refs aside.

Both linked stories there are proving popular online reading topics as is this unrelated astronomical photo gallery. (Off topic but I’ll link it here too for the curious.)

http://au.news.yahoo.com/news-gallery/a/-/article/6656914/image/1/the-wonders-of-outer-space/

I am still in awe of this event. Thanks BA for letting us know & explaining it so well.

By: Merijn

Merijn — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:18:12 +0000

Holy Haleakala! For the second time this day I’m struck with awe!
First there was the astronomy picture of the day (from Haleakala, with the brilliant Mars and moon-induced fogbow combination!), then there was this.

What a ridiculously rare chance that must’ve been. Its chance is maybe even worse than that of two very tiny insects flying at random in a sporting dome. I mean, 1 mm would’ve been enough for a miss, and this must’ve been a fairly nice direct hit.
Very cool indeed! (as long as they stay away from our planet, good thing some of them smash up like this)

By: Jon Hanford

Jon Hanford — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:04:59 +0000

Any chance Cassini, MRO, Mars Express or New Horizons could image this? Any of the comet/asteroid missions?

By: Anderstp

Anderstp — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:05:54 +0000

Love the blog.
1. To solid odjects coming together and spitting into many pieces with heat generated (possibly)… IS fission. Macro Fission (not nuclear fission) in this case.
2. If these two astroids are conglomerates there might not have been much of a flash.
3. Rate of expansion of the dust tail versus the speed/force of the solarwind would give you a good aproximation of where the collision occured relative to earth. But that location is a moot pointas the explsion is right in front of us (so to say) as the X or its center marks the spot.
4. That said if we know the location in space of the collision some telescope might have been pointing at it at the moment or shortly after.

Anyway… not wanting (so why am I mentioning this?) apocalypise this photo, but Throne of Fire comes to mind. (see that great bible passage Mark chap 23 for one of the best meteor impact warnings and advice passages in ancient texts)

Enjoy Anderstp

By: Hubble Detects Mysterious Spaceship-Shaped Object Traveling at 11,000MPH - Bad Astronomy and Universe Today Forum

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:59:23 +0000

[...] forgot to be a faithful follower of the BA Blog, where you can news (instead of fantasy) such as: Hubble captures pictures of asteroid collision! __________________ 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 [...]

By: Phil Plait

Phil Plait — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:39:30 +0000

morgajel, I posted about this a few days ago. In fact, I didn’t see any hint of it on the web before I put it here, and a few days later I saw links to it in other blogs as well. So I suspect we’ve come full circle here.