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A comet coming back into life?

22 December 2010
Astronomy

At www.physorg.com/print212167881.html … an asteroid with an orbit within, or crossing, the main asteroid belt, appears to be showing signs of revived life – leading to speculation that it might be a quiescent comet. The Catalonia Sky Survey Telescope was aimed on the asteroid belt when it came across a faint wispy tail surrounding a bright star like core. It was an asteroid known as Scheila, discovered over a hundred years ago. Now, a lot of other telescopes have homed in on the object and found it is what very much looks like a re-activated comet, in the process of an outburst. The coma appears to be largely composed of dust. Further observations are being made.

Note … the Catalonia Sky Survey is NASA funded with the object of searching out potentially hazardous near-earth objects

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