The Comet ATLAS was a cosmic flop last year and scientists may finally know why
By Elizabeth Howell about 6 hours ago
Images of Comet ATLAS taken on April 20 and April 23, 2020, show the comet breaking up into as many as 30 pieces. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/Quanzhi Ye (UMD)/Alyssa Pagan (STScI))
When scientists first spotted Comet ATLAS last year, they hoped it would be the brightest comet of the decade. Then, the icy hunk unexpectedly fell to pieces.
Now, astronomers think they may have figured out two mysteries surrounding why the comet suffered such an untimely demise. The nucleus, or heart, of Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) broke up between April 20 and April 23, 2020, when the comet was at 91 million miles (146 million kilometers) away from Earth, about the same distance as the sun is. Even more weirdly, not all pieces broke up at the same rate.
Strangely, scientists believe that ATLAS broke off from an ancestor comet that made a relatively close pass to Earth roughly 5,000 years ago. This huge comet came within only 23 million miles (37 million km) to the sun, closer than Mercury's orbit, and might have been noticed by humans at the time.
"The comet might have been a spectacular sight to civilizations across Eurasia and North Africa at the end of the Stone Age," NASA officials wrote in a statement. But coming to this conclusion — absent any written or pictorial records of the celestial visitor — took some scientific sleuthing.
More:
https://www.space.com/weird-comet-atlas-breaku-hubble-telescope-analysis?utm_source=notification