WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 9
#BEANASTRONAUT
During March, NASA
received more than
12,000 applications
from candidates ready
to become part of its
next astronaut class.
It’s the second highest
number of applications
the space agency has
ever received.SO LONG
A new theory suggests
that the strange,
elongated shape of
interstellar visitor
‘Oumuamua arose
through gravitational
interactions with its
home star before the
object’s ejection from
its star system.PERFECT MATCH
A German-led team
of astronomers has
verified that a star
orbiting the Milky
Way’s supermassive
black hole moves in a
precessing, rosettelike
orbit — just as Einstein’s
theory of general
relativity predicts.HOT
BYTESSNAPSHOT
QUANTUM GRAVITY
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNIVERSE THIS MONTH
QGHUBBLE
CAPTURES
COMETARY
BREAKUP
Comet ATLAS
disintegrated
before our eyes.
When astronomers first spotted
Comet C/2019 Y4 (ATLAS) in
December 2019, they predicted
it might become one of the
brightest comets to sweep past
Earth in two decades. The
comet seemed on track for a
brilliant apparition, brightening
through mid-March. But then
it started dimming again. On
April 11, amateur astronomer
Jose de Queiroz discovered that
ATLAS was falling apart when
photographs revealed the comet
had broken into three pieces.
By the time the Hubble Space
Telescope snapped this image
on April 20, the comet had
further disintegrated into about
30 fragments, some as large as
a house. Astronomers believe
the comet’s nucleus may have
originally been about the size of
two football fields before pieces
began breaking off. Although
this breakup ended our chances
of seeing a spectacular comet
streak through the sky, it could
ultimately give astronomers
some much-needed answers
about why comets break apart
and how often such disruptions
occur. — HAILEY ROSE MCLAUGHLINNA
SA
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