Once upon a time, there was an asteroid that flew past the Sun. The asteroid was very small as well as got the rocky structure. The nature of the asteroid was it can’t withstand the extreme heat conditions. Due to that, when it zoom passes the Sun, on its way, it dropped a million rocky fragments in its path. 

When researchers found about it, they call the asteroid as Phaethon. So, each year in December month, you can see that the planet sees a series of asteroid burns. All these burns up occur due to the Phaethon’s asteroid, and researchers call this asteroid show as Gemini meteor shower.

Which Spacecraft is near to Sun?

Well, it is not an easy task for the researchers to find the asteroid that is present there. But by chance, a NASA’s Spacecraft catch the trail. The Spacecraft which detects this trail was NASA’s Parker Solar Probe. The Spacecraft took off from earth in the year 2018, and the main objective of it is to solve the mystery of the stars giving out enormous energy.

When the Spacecraft travels closer to the Sun, it starts to measures the magnetic fields as well as other energetic particles around the Sun. Apart from that, all the images of the Sun and its solar winds too captured by the Spacecraft.

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How scientists detect the trail of Asteroids?

Well, when all these things are happening, during November, the Spacecraft catches a glimpse of some belts. They are very far and are like the line of dust. As per an astrophysicist who works at US Naval Research Laboratory, Karl Battams states that after that, he made a comparison of the position of dust particles and found it is of Phaethon’s asteroid.  

The trail that Parker Solar Probe comes across spread across 60,000 miles and about 12 million miles long. In that trial, there may be nearly billion kilograms of material present in it.  

 

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Nick Nesser
Born in Florida, brought up in New York, Nick Nesser is known as the best author for the Space section of Galaxy Reporters. Also, he is best known for his research on astronomy and his love for the satellites.

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