Comet Tuttle’s split personality
OCT 15, 2008
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.022775
ScienceNow : Astronomers have discovered their first grab-bag comet. Radar observations of the small, icy nucleus of a comet known as Tuttle suggest that it consists of two clumps that touch each other, like the two halves of the number eight. “It’s almost certainly a contact binary,” says John Harmon of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, who presented his team’s findings here this past weekend at the 40th meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society. The unexpected find opens up a window on the early history of our solar system.
© 2008 American Institute of Physics
