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Writer's pictureAnandhu Nair

Discovery of a Comet-Like Asteroid


Introduction

Asteroids are space rocks formed at the early stages of the formation of the solar system that floats in space by occupying specific paths between the planets mainly between Mars and Jupiter. They are also called minor planets or planetoids. They rotate around the sun in designated orbits. Some asteroids come closer to the earth at some particular point of time and pass the earth. At that time, asteroids can be visible to our naked eye. Many asteroids enter the earth’s atmosphere and burns in the atmosphere due to air friction and the leftover fragments fall on the earth. If an asteroid as large as New York enters the earth’s atmosphere, it would destroy all the life forms on earth. So scientists keep an eye on the asteroids that enter near-earth orbits by using The Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope located at Mauna Loa Observatory.



Trojan Asteroids

Trojan asteroids are the type of asteroids that occupies the orbit of a planet or a moon. They co-orbit the planet at the Lagrange points L4 and L5 at 60 degrees behind the planet or 60 degrees in front of the planet. The planets orbit the star at the common barycenter which is located to the star and is gravitationally bound to the star. So, an asteroid that has a smaller mass than these planets is influenced by the combined gravitational pull of planets and the star and therefore would be stable in its orbit and shares the same orbital period to that of the planet. In other words, it would be gravitationally locked with the planet. Jupiter is said to be the camp of the Trojan asteroids and it comes as no surprise due to its heavy gravitational pull.



Comet-Like Asteroid

Comets are the fast-moving space debris constituting of icy structure. When they pass close to the sun, it burns and forms a glowing atmosphere called Coma and a glowing tail of hot gases. Comets and asteroids are differentiated based on structure. Asteroids have rocky structures constituting mainly of iron and comets have icy structure. By contradicting the above-said facts, scientists have recently discovered a Jupiter Trojan asteroid called 2019 LD2 which has a comet-like tail. It was discovered on 10th June 2019 and it appeared to have a glowing tail preceding it when observed through ATLAS telescope. But the scientists could not study its structure deeply as it went to the other side of the sun. It appeared again in April 2020 and scientists were able to spot the tail again indicating that the asteroid has an icy composition beneath its surface and it burst out due to some collisions or some landslides that have happened on the asteroid. Therefore we have figured out the composition of an asteroid beneath its surface. Asteroid 2019 LD2 is 1 km long asteroid and it orbits the sun at a distance of 5.29 Astronomical Units once every 12.18 years.


Conclusion

With the discovery of comet-like tail for an asteroid 2019LD2 we have to rephrase the decade long definition of asteroids. Even though the answer to the question “how the icy layer beneath the surface of asteroid suddenly burst into the surface?” is not found yet, scientists now can do detailed research on this new icy composition of asteroids and unveil the solutions to the mysteries of these giant space rocks.

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