"Spiral UFO" Photographed by Hubble -- in the Asteroid Belt!!

mixmix; It's not clear why Dr. Jewitt published the first image. Perhaps he only realized that he had something far more unusual than a main belt comet, after releasing it. He may now regret having done so. By going silent on the subject, not even updating the section of his own website devoted to the object, he may have hoped to cause discussion to die down. This is what has happened, for the most part. I haven't seen any evidence that the image is a fake. Have gone over both the wide angle one and the enlargement. There is a good deal of blocky pixelation in the latter, which seems natural, considering the degree of magnification. Otherwise they seem to depict the same object. The size of 2010 AA 15 is exaggerated by diffraction, a normal telescopic effect with small bright objects. In reality it is much smaller than it appears. The light it is reflecting from the Sun is clearly striking it at a slanting angle of roughly 45 degrees, then leaving the object at about the same angle, and then going into the telescope. Ross

reply to post by Ross 54


Me too, I don't really think it's a fake.
I don't know this diffraction magnification effect.
I will search for some links for others readers.
You know more than me about this.

I begin to understand your 1) explanation.
Could it be more simply 2 others objects who have collided in a X pattern between or in the axis of P2010 A10 A2 and 2010 AA 15.
There's only one picture with the X pattern.
Not good for statistics but another possible explanation ???

As you have good knowledges ?
Do you have any opinion about ataraxie.free.fr... ?

mixmix; The material in the link you provide at the end of your post is rather off topic for this thread, so I will make my comments on it brief. The magnetic process of sorting and collecting antimatter particles described would not produce a practical antimatter bomb. Antimatter particles, of the sort that could be collected in this way would have mutual repulsion; could not be combined into useful amounts of antimatter. *** I am not certain what 'other bodies' you refer to that might have collided to produce P/2010 A2. Any predominantly rocky or metallic bodies would be classed as asteroids, predominantly icy ones would be comets. These would present the same problems, as have been referred to in this thread, in trying to fit them to a workable explanation of what is actually observed. A mutually destructive collision, which is the sort being posited, would be expected to leave a widespread cloud of debris, not narrow streams of it. &&& The fact that we have only one picture of the X-shaped pattern is due to the fact that only the Hubble Space Telescope has, so far, made sufficiently detailed images to reveal it, and only one images, of several existing has been released. Dr. Jewitt has told me that the newer images, which he declines to release, have a very similar appearance. bison

[edit on 20-4-2010 by Ross 54]

[edit on 20-4-2010 by Ross 54]

reply to post by Ross 54


yes it was completely off topic but I have already open a thread about that.
ATS:Sakharov Explosively pumped flux compression generator

So, the X-shaped pattern was still there on Feb 22nd.
Nice to know.

found this
IAU Minor Planet Center

what's means bison ?


[edit on 21-4-2010 by mixmix]

mixmix; The Minor Planet Center at Harvard College Observatory published this report on observations of P/2010 A2 on Jan. 7th. They've published several more since then. Unfortunately they haven't produced a new one for about a month. I check these frequently. Will look in at your antimatter bomb thread. bison

reply to post by Ross 54


Sorry for the link, I see it was also on wikipedia.
oops.

But
What's means bison ?

This thread is ending by lack of news and contributors.
wrong title. "spiral UFO". can an admin rename it for sanity ?
sad.
So I shut up for some time.
You are the current OP cause the original one have gone.
And you do it good. go on.
Still folowing.

Bernhard Haeusler reports new observations of P/2010 A2 on April 7th and 17th. The object is now at magnitude 18.3, up from 19.9 on the 7th. This may not sound a lot, but as each smaller whole number indicates a ~2.5 fold increase in brightness, it indicates an increase of between 3 and 4 times. It is brighter now than at the time of its discovery. I have also been watching with considerable interest his reports of the size of the object. These move both downward and upward over time. I tended to think that this was merely a case of a brighter object appearing larger, because more of it is sufficiently lighted to be visible. This is apparently not the case, however. Recent values of brightness and size do not fit this pattern. On April 1st and 7th the object was a relatively dim 19.7 and 19.9, yet the apparent sizes at those times, 1 arc minute 3 arc seconds, and 47 arc seconds are greater than for April 17th (43 arc seconds) when the object was substantially brighter. Between March 4th and March 11th the apparent size of the object first doubled in two days, then shrunk to little more than one third of its former size in five days. The general trend is one of decreasing size, as would be expected of an object that is increasing its distance from Earth. The departures from this trend appear inexplicable by conventional means. Ross

So what's new about this "Spiral UFO" object.
Did someone know where the last picture of this comet?
They should be available now.
It's more than one year old.

After looking the old picture, how can you know if the tail is going backward or forward.
My 3D vision is poor

Originally posted by mixmix
After looking the old picture, how can you know if the tail is going backward or forward.
My 3D vision is poor

So is your basic understanding of comets. Their tails don't GO 'backward or forward'.

Go look it up and report back.

Here's a recent paper, July 2011, by David Jewitt and his colleagues. Take's time to load.

Looks to me as if talk of an ET probe was premature, but I'd be interested in latest thoughts from Ross 54 in the light of Jewitt's paper - which will take me some time to grasp.

Originally posted by mixmix
So what's new about this "Spiral UFO" object.
Did someone know where the last picture of this comet?
They should be available now.
It's more than one year old.

It's believed now not to be a comet, but possibly an asteroid.

It was originally believed to be a comet because of the tail. However, that tail seemed odd when viewed from Earth-based telescopes, so someone found viewing time on the Hubble to take a look at it. They also had the "Rosetta" spacecraft do analysis.

With the help of Rosetta's and Hubble's analysis, plus the ground-based observations, it was discovered that the object may be the result of an asteroid collision with one or more other asteroids. What they thought was a comet's tail turned out to be probably the debris left over from the collision. Instead of the tail being caused by outgassing (like a comet), they found that the tail was probably caused by the asteroid collision.

As 'Lowneck' indicated above, there are still some scientific investigations still going on with this object, as evidenced by that paper published just last month.

Its a cylon base ship on its way to earth.
Thus proving that Battlestar Galactica was not a work of fiction but a documentary.

Hi,

thanks for the answers

Lowneck: interesting link focused on LINEAR failure to detect it. Not about the object.

Soylent green: Can you give me some link to your sources ?

Ross64: I'll be also happy to see your comment.

But I have no answers about where are the Hubble picture ?
They should be available to public now !!!

Originally posted by mixmix
Soylent green: Can you give me some link to your sources ?

The "not a comet but an asteroid" theory has been the prevailing theory for a while now (ever since that "spiral tail" picture was first released). Here are a few sources of information on this.

Here's an early article (January, 2010) which says scientists are not sure if the object is a comet, asteroid, or a hybrid "icy asteroid" that is off-gassing. There is early speculation in this article that the tail could be the result of two rocky asteroids colliding (which is now the prevailing theory).

Could P/2010 A2 be the First Ever Observation of an Asteroid Collision?



Here is an article from a month later (February, 2010) in which the "asteroid collision" idea (rather than it being a comet) is further reinforced, due to the additional information from Hubble

Hubblesite.org: Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Odd X-Pattern of Trailing Debris



In the article below from October of 2010, additional Hubble data and photos are discussed, along with data obtained from the The European Space Agency's (ESA) "Rosetta" spacecraft. By this time, it seemed more likely that this was the collision between two asteroids:

ESA: Hubble and Rosetta Unmask Nature of Recent Asteroid Wreck



And here again is the paper from July 2011 that 'Lowneck' linked earlier that takes a look back at the some of the original data from LINEAR and SOHO that was first obtained about this object, even before it was photographed by Hubble (this link opens into a pdf that takes a short while to load):

Pre-Discovery Observations of Disrupting Asteroid P/2010 A2