Asteroid Archaeology: Reconstructing the Disintegration of Asteroid P/2010 A2

Asteroid Archaeology: Reconstructing the Disintegration of Asteroid P/2010 A2

Paper Title: Dynamics of Large Fragments in the Tail of Active Asteroid P/2010 A2 Authors: Jessica Agarwal, David Jewitt, and Harold Weaver First Author’s Affiliation: Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany Journal: The Astrophysical Journal (Accepted) IntroductionIn January 2010, the LINEAR survey make a remarkable detection: it discovered an asteroid with a long, X-shaped trail (see Figure 1). Dynamical analysis of the tail (analyzing its orbit and stability) indicated the tail had been formed in a single event around nine months prior to the January 2010 observation.  This is very exciting: by studying this object, it’s possible, for the first time, get a direct observational handle on the process of asteroid disintegration! This is very important to understanding the evolution of the population of small asteroids in our solar system, as well as to understanding the formation of meteoroid streams which give rise to regular meteor showers like the Leonids.  Such studies are particularly important in light of recent initiatives by private industry and NASA towards mining asteroids.  Figure 1: Hubble Space Telescope (HST) image of the active asteroid P/2010 A2. The asteroid is the dark dot on the left. The tail is the material on the right, demarcated by an X-shape. The tail seems almost detached from the asteroid, an indication (along with the dynamical analysis) that it originated in a discrete, recent event. MethodPrevious work had indicated either a collisional (something smashed into the asteroid) or rotational (the asteroid spun itself apart) origin for the tail. In this paper, the authors took many Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images of the asteroid over time, starting in January 2010, to...