Doomed Celestial Visitor May Have Been a Piece of a Prehistoric Comet
When our very early ancestors were colonizing the Nile River Valley 5,000 years ago at the dawn of civilization, it's likely a brilliant comet appeared in the predawn sky. There is no direct evidence for this visitor because the start of recorded history was still a few centuries away.
The belief is that comet at least split into two pieces, which would not return to the Sun along the same orbital track until 5,000 years later. This forensic evidence can be linked to the great comet of 1844 that was nearly as bright as the brightest naked-eye star, Sirius. The second fragment, called comet ATLAS, appeared near the beginning of 2020.
Unlike its sibling that survived passing around the Sun in 1844, ATLAS met an untimely death while it was still 100 million miles from the Sun. It completely disintegrated as photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Find additional articles, images, and videos at HubbleSite.org
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