Asteroid 3200 Phaethon (IMAGE)

Naval Research Laboratory

Asteroid 3200 Phaethon

Caption

An image from the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe (WISPR), a U.S. Naval Research Laboratory-built camera, displays the dust trail of asteroid 3200 Phaethon near the Sun on Nov. 5, 2018. The trail is visible for the first time in the region where the white dots are omitted. 3200 Phaethon's orbit intersects Earth's orbit every year, and results in the Geminid Meteor shower.

Credit

(U.S. Navy photo by Brendan Gallagher and Guillermo Stenborg)

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