Strange solar celestial body, asteroid or comet?In fact, both

How to distinguish the new comet?

2005 QN173 is not an ordinary asteroid.

This synthetic image shows the passage of a rare active asteroid 2005 QN173. The core is located in the upper left corner of the image;

The stripes of the tail passed through the frame. (Picture source: Henry H. Xie (PSI), Jana Petigva

(National Space Administration/California Institute of Technology-Jet Promotion Experiment))

Scientists have discovered a rare solar celestial body, which has the characteristics of asteroids and comets.

This celestial body named 2005 QN173 is the same as any other small asteroid, but most of these celestial rocks change little when runtime around the solar system. The latest research, the QN173 discovered for the first time in 2005 is more like a comet. During the operation, it falls off the dust and has a slender tail, indicating that it is covered by ice material and has evaporation characteristics -comets usually follow the sun regularly around the sun Rotating ellipse path.

"Proper physical definition comet, it may be cold, discharged dust into space, and even it has a small asteroid track." A statement says. "The binary and two completely independent celestial bodies -the blur between the boundaries between the asteroid and the comet — highlight the interest of celestial body research."

Although it has the characteristics of comets, its orbit is a small planet: it turns around the sun steadily on the outer ring between the small asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, around 5 years.

However, this summer, astronomers investigated the data collected by the asteroid in Hawaii on July 7 to investigate the data collected by the Earth's final alarm system (ATLAS) and noticed that the object had a tail. A telescope at the Lowal Observatory in Arizona found this feature in another observation. On June 11, this "tail" was once again discovered in the image collected by Zawei's Timely transient facilities in California.

It has been observed many times that the celestial bodies are far away from the sun after May 14th, or after the near future. (Although the close distance of the comet is close to a typical small line appearing in the main stars belt, it is more dramatic. All celestial bodies running around the sun are getting closer and farther away from the sun. The recent point is early January.)

At the same time, other scientists' observations of QN173 collected in July 2016 through dark energy cameras were collected in July 2016. This is the last time the celestial body was in recent days -you see, they also found a tail here.

Recently -clicked activities and contours of comets

The heat from the sun continues to increase, turning frozen ice into gas. This process is called sublimation. Most of the comets stayed far away from the sun, and then their activities were frozen.

"Most comets were found from the cold solar system, outside the track of Neptune, and spent most of the time there, their highly extended track will only make them close to the sun and the earth in a short time," Henry · Xie said. "When they are close to the sun, they will heat up and spray gas and dust. The phenomenon of ice sublimation occurs. The appearance of a comet -like appearance and the spectacular tail are related to the comet."

Among the 500,000 objects tested by scientists, this is the eighth active object that scientists can confirm many times, and it is one of the only 20 suspected "host stars".

This new study includes the old observation data excavated in various instruments collected from 2004 to 2020 during the unrealistic period of comets to better understand the object itself. According to the statement, these observations show that the comet's core or comet nucleus is about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) wide.

Then, in order to better understand the activities of this strange main stars with comets, scientists used a series of instruments to conduct new observations on the celestial body in July and August this year. In particular, researchers can measure the tail of the object. It extended 450,000 miles (724,000 kilometers) in July, slightly lower than the distance from the earth to the moon.

However, despite its ultra -length, the tail is not so wide, and it is a new puzzle in front of scientists.

"This very narrow tail tells us that theoretically, dust particles float on the comet core at low speed, and the gas flow that escape from comets will bring the dust to the space in the space. Therefore, this gas flow is very weak. "Thank you.

"Such a slow speed usually makes it difficult for the dust to escape the gravity of the nucleus itself, so this indicates that there may be something else to help the dust escape," Henry Xie added. A kind of explanation may be that the nuclear rotor rotates too fast and sprays extra dust into space, but scientists lack sufficient observations to determine this.

The "bubble" of sodium makes the large asteroid Fayu have a strange comet -like appearance

Scientists are marking the calendar in February 2026. At that time, the celestial body can be seen from the southern hemisphere, the distance from the sun will also reach, and it may become active again.

The study was published in a paper on the Celestial Physics Magazine Communication, which can read the pre -print book on the pre -printing website; this study was announced at the Meeting Department of the Planet Science Department of the American Astronomical Association.

By: Meghan Bartelsfy: Jane

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