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Mysterious asteroid Phaethon surprises experts with its behavior

2023-04-30T18:20:31.852Z


The asteroid "Phaethon" behaves like a comet and is the trigger of a shower of shooting stars. A new study now shows that everything is different than previously thought.


The asteroid "Phaethon" behaves like a comet and is the trigger of a shower of shooting stars.

A new study now shows that everything is different than previously thought.

Pasadena - The asteroid "Phaethon" is a strange celestial body: When it comes close to the sun, it behaves like a comet and develops a tail.

Because of its orbit, Phaethon is thought to be the origin of the annual Geminid shooting stars.

So far, research has assumed that the tail consists of dust particles, as is actually the case with comets.

If these dust particles remain in space and the earth moves through the dust trail, a stream of shooting stars is created.

But now a research group led by doctoral student Qicheng Zhang from the California Institute of Technology has found something that turns these assumptions on their head.

"Our analysis shows that the comet-like activity of 'Phaethon' cannot be explained by any type of dust," Zhang said in a statement from the US space agency Nasa.

Instead of dust, the tail of the asteroid "Phaethon" is apparently made of sodium.

The research team published the research work in the

Planetary Science Journal

.

Surname:

(3200) Phaethon, (1983TB)

Type:

Apollo asteroid

Diameter:

6.25 kilometers

Orbital period around the sun:

524 days

Discovery:

October 11, 1983

Named after:

Greek mythology: Son of the Greek sun god Helios

Asteroid "Phaethon" behaves like a comet - research is puzzling

The difference between asteroids and comets lies in their composition: asteroids are usually made of rock and do not develop a tail as they approach the sun.

Comets, on the other hand, are made up of loose chunks of rock held together by ice.

When a comet approaches the sun, part of the ice becomes gaseous – the tail is formed, in which dust and small pieces of rock from the comet can also be found.

When the asteroid Phaethon was discovered in 1983, it was quickly thought to be the source of the Geminids, as its trajectory matched the annual meteor shower.

Years later, NASA's STEREO solar telescope discovered a short tail at "Phaethon" - and the matter seemed clear: Dust from the tail was responsible for the shooting stars.

In 2018, however, the Parker Solar Probe showed that the dust trail in space contained much more material than Phaethon was able to lose during its approaches to the Sun.

What is behind the tail of the asteroid "Phaethon"?

That's why Zhang's research group asked itself: Is there perhaps something other than dust behind the strange tail behavior of the asteroid?

“Comets often glow with sodium emission when they are very close to the Sun.

Therefore, we suspected that sodium might also play a key role in brightening "Phaethon," Zhang said.

Using the NASA/ESA SOHO spacecraft, his team studied the asteroid's tail as it approached the Sun again in 2022.

The space telescope is equipped with color filters that can detect sodium and dust.

And lo and behold: In current and older SOHO images, the researchers found that the tail of the asteroid was bright and clear in the sodium filter - in contrast, the tail did not appear in the dust filter.

The research team also found that the tail brightened as "Phaethon" flew past the Sun - just as researchers would expect for a sodium tail.

"Phaethon": Din Asteroid that forms a tail from the heat of the sun

"We have a really cool result that turns 14 years of thinking on its head about a well-studied object," said Naval Research Laboratory team member Karl Battams, adding: "We did this using data from two heliophysical spacecraft - SOHO and STEREO – which were not intended at all for the study of phenomena like this.”

After this amazing find, Zhang and his team are considering whether some comets detected by the SOHO probe might not be comets at all.

"Many of these other 'comets' orbiting the sun may not be 'comets' in the usual sense either, but rather rocky asteroids like 'Phaethon' that are heated by the sun," Zhang surmises.

But how does the research group explain the fact that the asteroid "Phaethon", which apparently has no dust tail, causes the Geminid meteor shower every December?

One theory the team has is that something must have happened thousands of years ago that caused the asteroid to lose billions of tons of material.

What exactly could have led to this, however, is unclear.

It seems that the asteroid "Phaethon" will continue to be an extremely mysterious celestial body that is always good for a surprise.

(tab)

Source: merkur

All news articles on 2023-04-30

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