The Comet with a Broken Heart (ESO 15/06)
On the night of April 23 to 24, ESO's Very Large Telescope observed fragment B
of the comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 that had split a few days earlier. To their
great surprise, the ESO astronomers discovered that the piece just ejected by
fragment B was splitting again! Five other mini-comets are also visible on the
image. The comet seems thus doomed to disintegrate but the question remains in
how much time.
Read ESO 15/06 and see the images at
http://www.eso.org/outreach/press-rel/pr-2006/pr-15-06.html
With kind regards,
The ESO Public Affairs Dept.