Asteroids are mostly rocky and airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system. A Comet, on the other hand, is a mix of ice and rock. One of the interesting facts about comets is that they form tails when the Sun evaporates their ice, and it blows up matter and leaves trails along their orbits. In contrast, due to their rocky nature, asteroids do not form such tails.
However, oddly enough, there is a strange asteroid called 3200 Phaethon that acts like a comet! NASA revealed that asteroid 3200 Phaethon “lights up and forms a tail when it is close to the Sun, and it is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower.” Until now, scientists had blamed this behavior on dust escaping the asteroid as it got closer to the Sun. Surprisingly, the latest learn Using two NASA solar observatories helped show that instead of dust, Phaethon’s tail was mostly composed of sodium gas.
About small planet 3200 phaethons
In 1983, the discovery of Phaethon by astronomers led to the realization that the asteroid’s orbit aligns with the orbits of Geminid meteorites. Although an asteroid and not a comet, this discovery indicates that Phaethon is the source of the annual outflow. meteor shower.
As Phaethon approaches its closest point to Sun in 2009, NASA’s Solar Relations on Earth Observatory (STEREO) detected a short tail emanating from the asteroid. This supports the idea that dust was released from the asteroid’s surface by the heat of the Sun.
However, in 2018, a solar mission photographed part of the Geminid debris trail and made an unexpected discovery. Observations from NASA’s Parker Solar Probe show that the streak contains a significantly larger amount of material than Phaethon could have shed during its close approach to the Sun.
What makes this asteroid behave like a comet?
The latest paper in the Journal of Planetary Science, led by Qicheng Zhang, a doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology, suggests that Phaethon’s close encounter with the Sun led to evaporation of sodium inside the asteroid and propel the comet. love to be active.
The researchers used the Solar and Heliosphere Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft — a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) — which has color filters that can detect sodium and dust. This evidence indicates that Phaethon’s tail is made of sodium, not dust.
