Hubble Provides Spectacular Detail of a Comet's Breakup

Running Time: 3 seconds

Annotated sequence of three Hubble Space Telescope Advanced Camera for Surveys images of the disintegration of Comet 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3's fragment B. This fragment continues to break into smaller chunks, which are pushed down its tail. The smaller chunks have the lowest mass and so are accelerated away from the parent nucleus faster than the larger chunks. Some chunks seem to dissipate completely over the course of several days.

Credit: NASA, ESA and G. Bacon (STScI)