The enigmatic asteroid 'sprinkler' six tails - The Mundo.es

not have one, but six tails, and some have compared its unusual structure with a sprinkler watering the garden of the Cosmos. That’s the surprising object just discovered in the asteroid belt Hubble Space Telescope NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).

“We were literally stunned when I saw,” said Professor Dave Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. “It’s amazing that the structure of their tails dramatically changed every 13 days while spitting dust is . This also completely surprised us.’s Hard to believe we’re talking about an asteroid.”

conventional asteroids usually appear as small points of light when observed by scientists. But this asteroid, called P/2013 P5 , has six lines of dust. It was first seen in August this year. by Pan-Starrs telescope in Hawaii, as an object with an extremely diffuse appearance .

The finding, which has been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, has caused great excitement in the scientific community because it is the first time you see something, and astronomers are trying to find an adequate explanation of its mysterious appearance.

The Hubble images were taken on September 10, 2013. When the Hubble Space again observed the asteroid on September 23, his appearance had changed completely. It seemed that the entire structure had turned completely.

One explanation for the unusual structure of this celestial body is that the asteroid’s rotation speed increased to the point of its surface began to fly apart, spewing dust episodic eruptions that would have begun last spring.

Astrophysicists discarded

concerned beaten by an asteroid impact, since in that case the heavy dust would have extended through space at one time, while in this body powder form has been expelled from intermittently for a period of at least five months.

Now Hubble team is conducting further observations to discuss the subject in more detail. Scientists hope to determine if the dust out of the asteroid in the equatorial plane, which would be evidence of a breach of its rotation.