Disintegration of Asteroid P/2013 R3

This series of Hubble Space Telescope images reveals the breakup of an asteroid over a period of several months starting in late 2013. The largest fragments are up to 180 meters (200 yards) in radius, each with "tails" caused by dust lifted from their surfaces and pushed back by the pressure of sunlight. The ten pieces of the asteroid drift apart slowly and show a range of breakup times, suggesting that the disintegration cannot be explained by a collision with another asteroid. One idea for the breakup is that the asteroid was accelerated by sunlight to spin at a fast enough rate to fly apart by centrifugal force. The images were taken in visible light with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3.

About the colours

This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of bluish hues. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly varying brightness in an image.

About the data

The Hubble data are from proposal 13612 : D. Jewitt (University of California, Los Angeles), H. Weaver (JHU/APL), J. Agarwal (Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research), S. Larson (University of Arizona), and M. Mutchler (STScI).