Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
2022 October 5
Video Credit: Les Makes Observatory, J. Berthier, F. Vachier, A. Klotz, P. Thierry, T. Santana-Ros, ESA NEOCC, D. Föhring, E. Petrescu, M. Micheli
If you crash a spaceship into an asteroid, what will happen? In the case of NASA's DART spaceship and the small asteroid Dimorphos, you get a large amount of dust. To show that the path of an asteroid can be altered so that it misses the Earth was the goal of the planned impact. Many were surprised by the high brightness of the plume, and what it means remains a subject of research. It's possible that Dimorphos is a rubble pile asteroid and the collision dispersed some of the rubble in the pile. The Les Makes Observatory on France's Reunion Island was the location of the featured time-lapse video. Didymos is Dimorphos's larger companion and is one of the Earth-based observatories that followed the impact. The Didymos - Dimorphos system has develop comet-like tails.
Tomorrow's picture: open space
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