With so many objects in space, it will be hard to monitor and witness everything that happens. In this rare instance, the Hubble telescope witnessed an asteroid as it disintegrates.
The crumbling asteroid, designated P/2013 R3, was first noticed as an unusual, fuzzy-looking object on 15 September 2013 by the Catalina and Pan-STARRS sky surveys. Follow-up observations on 1 October with the Keck Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, revealed three co-moving bodies embedded in a dusty envelope that is nearly the diameter of Earth.
(Image credit: NASA/ESA/D. Jewitt/UCLA)