Hubble Finds that a Bizarre X-Shaped Intruder Is Linked to an Unseen Asteroid Collision

Go to image download page

October 13, 2010: Last January astronomers thought they had witnessed a fresh collision between two asteroids when images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope revealed a bizarre X-shaped object. After using Hubble to track the oddball body for five months, astronomers were surprised to find that they had missed the suspected smashup by a year. The science results are reported in the October 14 issue of the science journal Nature.