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Hubble Photographs Boulders Flung Off Asteroid Dimorphos

Against a black background, the bright white object at lower left is the asteroid Dimorphos. It has a bluish dust tail extending diagonally to the upper right. A cluster of blue dots surround the asteroid. These are boulders that were knocked off the asteroid when, on September 26, 2022, NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into the asteroid as a test of what it would take to deflect some future asteroid from hitting Earth. Hubble photographed the slow-moving boulders with the Wide Field Camera 3 in December 2022. The color results from assigning a blue hue to the monochromatic (grayscale) image.

This Hubble Space Telescope image of the asteroid Dimorphos was taken on December 19, 2022, nearly four months after the asteroid was impacted by NASA's DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test). Hubble's sensitivity reveals a few dozen boulders knocked off the asteroid by the force of the collision. These are among the faintest objects Hubble has ever photographed inside the solar system. The free-flung boulders range in size from three feet to 22 feet across, based on Hubble photometry. They are drifting away from the asteroid at a little more than a half-mile per hour. The discovery yields invaluable insights into the behavior of a small asteroid when it is hit by a projectile for the purpose of altering its trajectory.

 

About the Data

  • Data Description
    Data DescriptionProposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
    Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.

    This image was created with Hubble data from proposal: 17289 (D. Jewitt)

  • Instrument
    InstrumentThe science instrument used to produce the data.
    WFC3/UVIS
  • Exposure Dates
    Exposure DatesThe date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
    19 Dec 2022
  • Filters
    FiltersThe camera filters that were used in the science observations.
    F350LP
  • Object Name
    Object NameA name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
    Dimorphos
  • Object Description
    Object DescriptionThe type of astronomical object.
    Asteroid boulder field
  • Release Date
    July 20, 2023
  • Science Release
    Hubble Sees Boulders Escaping from Asteroid Dimorphos
    Read the release
  • Credits
    NASA, ESA, David Jewitt (UCLA); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Downloads

  • Full Res, 1505 × 1338
    tif (2.61 MB)
  • Full Res, 1505 × 1338
    png (2.18 MB)
Against a black background, the bright white object at lower left is the asteroid Dimorphos. It has a bluish dust tail extending diagonally to the upper right. A cluster of blue dots surround the asteroid. These are boulders that were knocked off the asteroid when, on September 26, 2022, NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into the asteroid as a test of what it would take to deflect some future asteroid from hitting Earth. Hubble photographed the slow-moving boulders with the Wide Field Camera 3 in December 2022. The color results from assigning a blue hue to the monochromatic (grayscale) image.
Color Info
Color InfoA brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented.

This image is acquired by the WFC3 instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. The color results from assigning a blue hue to a monochromatic (grayscale) image.

Compass and Scale
Compass and ScaleAn astronomical image with a scale that shows how large an object is on the sky, a compass that shows how the object is oriented on the sky, and the filters with which the image was made.

Related Images & Videos

Image of boulders on the surface of asteroid Dimorphos as seen by DART prior to impact.

Surface Image of Dimorphos

This is the last complete image of the asteroid Dimorphos, as seen by NASA's DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) impactor spacecraft two seconds before impact. The Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) imager aboard captured a...

Against a black background, the image of the asteroid Dimorphos, with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. The bright white object at lower left is Dimorphos. It has a blue dust tail extending diagonally to the upper right. A cluster of blue dots (marked by white circles) surrounds the asteroid. These are boulders that were knocked off the asteroid when, on September 26, 2022, NASA deliberately slammed the half-ton DART impactor spacecraft into the asteroid as a test of what it would take to deflect some future asteroid from hitting Earth. Hubble photographed the slow-moving boulders with the Wide Field Camera 3 in December 2022. The color results from assigning a blue hue to the monochromatic (grayscale) image.

Hubble Photographs Boulders Flung Off Asteroid Dimorphos (Compass Image)

Image of the asteroid Dimorphos, with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to...

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Details

Last Updated
Mar 10, 2025
Contact
Media

Claire Andreoli
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
claire.andreoli@nasa.gov

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