I just saw a report that Steve Larson of the University of Arizona observed a "comet" last night (Saturday morning, December 11th UT), which turned out to be asteroid 596 Scheila. The asteroid, which is quite big (about 113 km in diameter) is surrounded by a vaguely spiral-shaped dust cloud. A recent impact, maybe? If so, it would be the first recorded impact on a large asteroid.
Interesting!
John
Wow, breaking news! Do you have a link, John?
No link so far- this was just an e-mail I received, which didn't have much more information. There was a picture, but I'd want to get Steve's permission before posting it here.
John
Understood.
This sounds extremely interesting. Are the Hubble people getting tired of urgent retargeting requests for sudden Solar System events yet?
Wow. Will be watching this topic closely.
Amazing!
If confirmed, it would be an interesting exercise for the UMSF Computational Division to analyze all the other cataloged asteroids' orbital elements and see if any have had a recent close (ahem, really close) approach to 596 Scheila.
Regarding Hubble, it is easier to check out 596 Scheila than to look at all the other asteroids to make sure they are all still present and accounted for.
If this was in fact an impact I rather doubt that the object was large enough to have been previously detected, though.
Relative velocity is probably a much bigger factor here than the impactor's mass or volume; look at what Deep Impact did to Temple 1!
Yeah, figured I had better put a smiley on my post.
This is really exiting news though. Nice Christmas present for those of us interested in such things.
I see 596 Sheila might have produced a visible occulatation back in 2005 for our friends in Australia and New Zealand. Wonder if we have any data on satellites?
Hubble watched something like this once before (three times to be exact):
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/34
Of course, this time one of the participants has been seen before, I'm sure they'll take a peek.
http://remanzacco.blogspot.com/2010/12/comet-like-appearance-of-596-scheila.html have posted an image on their blog. Very cool!
Awesome. It'll be interesting to see this unfold. Heres a quick cleanup (really rough).
My, my, my. That looks like a considerable amount of material; let's see how long it keeps coming out.
I wonder if right now we're looking nearly straight down 596 Schelia's rotation axis.
EDIT: Just found http://aartscope.blogspot.com/2010/12/whats-up-with-scheila-596.html by an observer in New Mexico, who has an image less than 2 hrs. old posted as I write this; he's trying for some color images later today.
Here's a recent image, from the 1m SARA remote telescope on Kitt Peak. Start at 0939 UT on Dec 13, 10m exposure with V filter by student Erin Darnell and me. The apparent motion was slow enough that we could use a guide star to track at sidereal rate (the telescope often doesn't track open-loop that well for such times). It looks much as if there are two distinct plumes, unless the 3D geometry is pretty twisted.
I didn't have the time to read it yet, but I noticed this on arXiv today: http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.5456
Asteroid 596 Scheila was named for the Queen by an Australian who was heard to say, "She's a good Scheila Bruce, and not at all stuck up."
Dan, please leave the room and when we think you have thought long enough about what you have done and understand why it was wrong, we will let you come back inside
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