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Suspected asteroid collision
Suspected asteroid collision. Space telescope image of the comet-like object P/2010 A2 (white speck, lower left) with a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. The most likely interpretation of this data suggests that two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight. The main nucleus of P/2010 A2 would be the surviving remnant of this so-called hypervelocity collision. Imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).
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