The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped photos of a periodic comet called 252P/LINEAR.
This Hubble Space Telescope image of Comet 252P/LINEAR was photographed at 20:56 GMT on April 4, when the comet was 8.6 million miles from Earth. The visit was one of the closest encounters between this comet and our planet. 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. Image credit: NASA / ESA / J.-Y. Li, Planetary Science Institute.
According to astronomers, Comet 252P/LINEAR is an Earth-Jupiter family comet and a near-Earth object.
It was first discovered in 2000 by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey.
The Hubble images of this comet were taken on April 4, 2016, roughly two weeks after it made its closest approach to Earth on March 21.
At the time of the observations, the comet was 8.6 million miles (14 million km, or 0.093 AU) from our planet.
The Sun-comet distance on that date was 96 million miles (155 million km, or 1.037 AU).
At closest approach, it was 3.3 million miles (5.4 million km, 0.036 AU) from Earth.
The observations also represent the closest celestial object Hubble has observed, other than the Moon.
The images reveal a narrow, well-defined jet of dust ejected by Comet 252P/LINEAR’s icy nucleus, which is too tiny for Hubble to resolve. Astronomers estimate that it is less than one mile across.
The jet in the Hubble images is illuminated by sunlight. It also appears to change direction in the images, which is evidence that the comet’s nucleus is spinning.
The spinning nucleus makes the jet appear to rotate like the water jet from a rotating lawn sprinkler.
Comet 252P/LINEAR is traveling away from Earth and the Sun. It will return to the inner Solar System again in 2021.
