A young comet has been detected near Jupiter's asteroids by NASA's Hubble telescope. The comet collided with a group of ancient asteroids known as "Trojans," which orbit Jupiter alongside the sun. According to NASA, this is the first time a comet-like object has been detected near the Trojan population.

NASA said computer simulations reveal that the ice object known as P/2019 LD2 (LD2) approached Jupiter around two years ago. Jupiter then gravitationally forced the errant traveler into the Trojan asteroid group's co-orbital spot, some 437 million miles ahead of Jupiter.

Express.co.uk claimed the comet belongs to the 'Centaurs' family of comets. Centaurs are ice bodies that occur in Jupiter and Neptune's orbits.

"Only Hubble could detect active comet-like features this far away at such high detail, and the images clearly show these features, such as a roughly 400,000-mile-long broad tail and high-resolution features near the nucleus due to a coma and jets," said lead Hubble researcher Bryce Bolin of Caltech in Pasadena, California.

NASA Hubble shared the sighting on Instagram. The caption claimed that the comet had made a brief stop near the Trojans, but it will not be remaining there for long.

Using Hubble Telescope

University of Hawaii's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescopes on Mauna Kea and Haleakala found the asteroid in early June 2019.

Seiichi Yoshida, a Japanese amateur astronomer, alerted the Hubble team to possible comet activity. After scanning archival data from the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide-field survey conducted at Palomar Observatory in California, the astronomers discovered that the object was clearly active in images taken in April 2019.

They followed up with observations from New Mexico's Apache Point Observatory, which pointed to the activity as well. The team used Spitzer to observe the comet. Experts said in another NASA article that they discovered gas and dust around the nucleus just days before the observatory was shut down in January 2020,

These findings persuaded the team to use Hubble to investigate further. The researchers used Hubble's sharp vision to identify the tail, coma structure, dust particle size, and ejection velocity. These images confirmed that the features are the result of recent comet-like activity.

Although the location of LD2 is unexpected, Bolin speculates that this could be a common pit stop for some sunward-bound comets.

The Hubble Space Telescope of NASA was able to obtain visible-light snapshots of comet activity. A tail, outgassing in the shape of jets, and an engulfing coma of dust and gas are among them. According to a NASA study, after the comet is knocked out of Jupiter's orbit and proceeds on its trajectory, it will re-cross paths with the earth.

"Short-period comets like LD2 meet their fate by being thrown into the Sun and totally disintegrating, hitting a planet, or venturing too close to Jupiter once again and getting thrown out of the solar system, which is the usual fate," said team member Carey Lisse of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland.

Lisse cited the simulations done, saying that there's a 90% likelihood that this object would be expelled from the solar system and become an interstellar comet in about 500,000 years.

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