'Sprinkler' Asteroid Has Six Comet-Like Tails

Astronomers staring deep into space through the giant Hubble Space Telescope have found that a new asteroid has six comet-like tails.

The faint streaks, which radiate from the asteroid like spokes on a wheel, are generated as the rock speeds through the solar system, shedding dust as it goes.

Unusually, the object, known as P/2013 P5 and likened to a "rotating lawn sprinkler" by experts at Nasa, regularly changes its appearance.

In two pictures taken a fortnight apart, it appears to have spun around, with the dust tails trailing the asteroid at an entirely different angle.

David Jewitt, an astronomer at the University of California in Los Angeles, said the discovery left his team "dumbfounded".

"We were completely knocked out," he said. "It's hard to believe we're looking at an asteroid."

The asteroid was originally found by scientists using the Pan-STARSS telescope in Hawaii, who were studying the area between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

It has been ejecting dust for at least five months and is now thought to be spinning so fast that its surface has started to disintegrate.

Up to 1,000 tonnes of dust has been lost so far, but this is a tiny fraction of the overall mass of the 1,400ft-wide object.

Mr Jewitt said the asteroid, which is believed to be a fragment of a larger object that broke apart about 200 million years ago, could be the first of many.

"In astronomy, where you find one, you eventually find a whole bunch more," he said.

"This is just an amazing object to us, and almost certainly the first of many more to come."