2023-05-23 00:00:00
22 may. 2023 – 20:00 hrs.
He asteroide 3200 Phaeton continues to generate confusion at NASA. Despite being considered an asteroid, it also acts as a cometbeing responsible, for example, for the annual meteor shower Geminids. This strange behavior had been attributed by scientists to dust escaping from the asteroid when it is close to the Sun.
However, new research reveals a different phenomenon. Using two solar observatories, NASA identified that Phaeton’s tail doesn’t have dust, but is actually made of sodium gas. This tail is the great mystery that the scientists of the space agency cannot solve.
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Phaeton’s kola
Asteroids do not usually form tails as they approach the Sun. Instead, comets leave a trail when the sun’s heat vaporizes the ice they are made of. In 1983, when Phaeton was discovered, scientists realized that its orbit coincided with the Geminid meteors. As a result, it was recognized as the source of the annual meteor shower, despite being an asteroid and not a comet.
In 2009, the STEREO observatory of NASA discovered a short tail that Phaeton ejected when the asteroid reached its closest point to the Sun. An event that they detected once more in their approaches in 2012 and 2016, respectively. For the space agency researchers, the appearance of this tail suggested that it was made of dust.
Paradigm shift
However, in 2018, another solar mission captured images that cast doubt on the conformation of Phaeton. The probe Solar Parker of NASA detected that the trace of the tail of Phaeton contained more material than it might throw off in its passage near the Sun.
“Our analysis shows that Phaethon’s comet-like activity cannot be explained by any kind of dust.”assured Qicheng Zhanga doctoral student at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of the research published in Planetary Science Journal.
Following this, Zhang and his team set out to reanalyze the 18 solar approach Phaeton made between 1997 and 2022. As a result, they saw that the tail appeared bright on the filter that detects sodiumbut it did not appear on the filter that detects dust.
With these results in hand, Zhang and company cast doubt: some discovered comets might not really be comets. “Many of those other ‘comets’ skirting the Sun may not be ‘comets’ in the usual sense of the icy body, but they may be rocky asteroids like Phaeton heated by the SunZhang explained.
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