Asteroid Smashup Images Caught by NASA’s Spitzer Telescope

Peering deep into space at a star some 1200 light-years away, NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has spotted an eruption of dust around a young star which appears to be the result of a smashup between large asteroids.

The star, 35 million year old NGC 2547-ID8, has been under surveillance by the team which manages Spitzer after it surged with a huge amount of fresh dust between August 2012 and January 2013.

“We think two big asteroids crashed into each other, creating a huge cloud of grains the size of very fine sand, which are now smashing themselves into smithereens and slowly leaking away from the star,” said lead author and graduate student Huan Meng of the University of Arizona, Tucson.

This incident marks the first time scientists have collected data both before and after a planetary system smashup. Scientists believe that events like this are a glimpse into the violent process of making rocky planets like ours.

Rocky planets begin life as dusty material circling around young stars. The material clumps together to form asteroids that ram into each other. Although the asteroids often are destroyed, some grow over time and transform into proto-planets. After about 100 million years, the objects mature into full-grown, terrestrial planets. Our moon is thought to have formed from a giant impact between proto-Earth and a Mars-size object.

“We not only witnessed what appears to be the wreckage of a huge smashup, but have been able to track how it is changing — the signal is fading as the cloud destroys itself by grinding its grains down so they escape from the star,” said Kate Su of the University of Arizona and co-author on the study. “Spitzer is the best telescope for monitoring stars regularly and precisely for small changes in infrared light over months and even years.”

To read more about this event and about the Spitzer telescope, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer