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I’ve seen thousands of astronomical images over my career, but this is one of the few absolute jaw-droppers: A flying X-pattern with trailing streamers. At first glance it looks like a four-pointed Kohga Ninja throwing star blade.
It’s so weird-looking that you want to call the UFO hotline. Maybe it’s a Romulan “Bird of Prey” starship decloaking as it enters our solar system.
The mystery object, located 100 million miles from Earth, may really be the aftermath of a hypervelocity collision between two asteroids – like a bullet hitting another bullet. Whatever it is, nothing quite like it has ever before been seen in the heavens.
The comet-like object, called P/2010 A2, was first discovered by the LINEAR (Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program) sky survey on January 6. Telescopes around the world turned their attention to it.
Comet expert David Jewitt of UCLA quickly applied for special discretionary time on the Hubble Space Telescope to get a close-up look at the object. Hubble pictures take on January 25 and 29 left everyone speechless. It’s fun watching the expression on the faces of astronomers when they first see it, like “WTF!?”
I reported on the strange space visitor in January, and some readers dismissed it as just another one of a handful of hybrid asteroid-comets that was outgassing. But the Hubble view removes any lingering doubt that this is something new in astronomical observations.
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