Six-tailed asteroid confounds astronomers

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble telescope have witnessed for the first time an asteroid with six comet-like tails, much like the spokes of a wheel.

The asteroid, now called P/2013 P5, is unlike any other seen before.

Most asteroids when seen through a telescope look like a streak of light, while this asteroid looks like a sprinkler shooting out dust in multiple directions.

"We were literally dumbfounded when we saw it," said lead investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "Even more amazing, its tail structures change dramatically in just 13 days as it belches out dust. That also caught us by surprise. It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."

The asteroid has been ejecting dust for the past 5 months and astronomers believe its rotation speed increased to such a point that it started ejecting its own surface.

First sighted on August 27 as a fuzzy-looking object, the asteroid's appearance had changed by September 23. It looked like the entire structure had swung around.

Jessica Agarwal, astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research calculated the spin rate of the asteroid and determined it could reach a spin rate at which it would no longer hold together. The asteroid has already lost 100 of the 1000 tons of dust on its surface.

According to Jewitt's interpretation of this phenomenon, this could lead to better understanding of how small asteroids break up.

"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," Jewitt said. "This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."