Comet Atlas is falling apart, new photos confirm

It's official: Comet Atlas has broken apart.

Just a month ago, it looked like the icy wanderer, officially known as C/2019 Y4 Atlas, might put on a dazzling sky show around the time of its closest approach to the sun, or perihelion, which occurs on May 31. 

But relatively lackluster behavior soon dimmed such hopes. And optimism surrounding the comet is now pretty much extinguished, for it's no longer in one piece.

Comet Atlas "has shattered both its and our hearts," astrophysicist Gianluca Masi, the founder and director of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy, said in an emailed statement on Sunday (April 12). "Its nucleus disintegrated, and last night I could see three, possibly four main fragments."

The Virtual Telescope Project captured this view of Comet Atlas' shattered nucleus on April 11, 2020.
(Image: © Gianluca Masi/Virtual Telescope Project (www.virtualtelescope.eu))

Masi posted online some of the photos he took, which clearly show the comet's splintered core. 

Atlas was discovered in late December 2019 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Hawaii, which explains the object's name.

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