C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) – April 20, 2020 and April 23, 2020

This pair of Hubble Space Telescope images of comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS), taken on April 20 and April 23, 2020, provide the sharpest views yet of the breakup of the solid nucleus of the comet. Hubble's eagle-eye view identifies as many as 30 separate fragments.

Hubble distinguishes pieces that are roughly the size of a house. Before the breakup, the entire nucleus of the comet may have been the length of one or two football fields. Astronomers aren't sure why this comet broke apart. The comet was approximately 91 million miles (146 million kilometers) from Earth when the images were taken.

About the colours

These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The color results from assigning the color blue to a monochromatic (grayscale) image.

About the data

The HST observations include those from program 16111 (D. Jewitt)