370E-403-Double Comet

In November of 2006, University of Arizona's Spacewatch astronomers on Kitt Peak discovered a faint moving point of light in the night sky which appeared to be a garden variety main belt asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. The Minor Planet Center calculated it's orbit and gave it the name 2006 VW139. Five years later when it again moved closest to the Sun the Pan-STARRS group in Hawaii discovered that 2006 VW139 is surrounded by a gas cloud like a comet and it was given a comet designation, 288P. My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Steve Larson is a member of the team of astronomers who use the Hubble Space Telescope to observe asteroids which have comet like burps. Observations by the Hubble Space Telescope between August 2016 and January 2017 clearly show 288P to be two similar, mile diameter, asteroids orbiting each other about 60 miles apart, surrounded by a gas cloud, as they move about the Sun. The Hubble team estimates that about 5,000 years ago this strange object was formed when a rapidly rotating comet nucleus came apart into two large pieces. It's gas cloud is likely to come from volatile ices like carbon dioxide and water vapor which were liberated by solar heating. Objects like this one are very interesting since they may have had a role in bringing water to a bone dry Earth in the early days of our solar system.