An artist’s illustration of what Phaeton might look like up close.
Credit: Heather Roper
Blue asteroids are rare, and blue comets are almost unheard of. An international team led by Teddy Kareta, a doctoral student at the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, investigated (3200) Phaethon, a bizarre asteroid that sometimes behaves like a comet, and found it even more enigmatic than previously thought.
Kareta presented the results during a press conference on Oct. 23 at the 50th annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science in Knoxville, Tennessee. Using telescopes in Hawaii and Arizona, the team studied sunlight reflected off Phaethon, which is known to be blue in color...
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