Overview
- A peer-reviewed Icarus paper details Hubble images from November 8–10, 2025 showing at least four fragments, with one piece splitting further during the three-image sequence.
- Researchers estimate the breakup began roughly eight days before the observations, shortly after the comet’s close solar pass inside Mercury’s orbit in early October 2025.
- Hubble’s high resolution allowed scientists to trace the pieces back to a single nucleus and reconstruct the timing of the disintegration.
- The team is probing an unresolved delay between the breakup and later bright outbursts seen from Earth, raising new questions about surface physics.
- Follow-up spectroscopy with Hubble’s STIS and COS instruments will examine the comet’s unusually low carbon signature as the fragment cluster recedes about 250 million miles away in Pisces and is unlikely to return.