For a video game I'm looking for footage of a collision of meteoroids or maybe asteroids, not planets. Even though I have searched for a while I couldn't find anything. So has anyone ever captured footage?
3 Answers
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Deep Impact, the NASA comet probe, not the movie, may be as close as you can get to what you want now. Here's a video of the action when 370 kg of copper hits a comet at 10.2 km/s. There may be better video out there, but the movie trailers really mess up the search.
answered Dec 23, 2015 at 19:41
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I'm fairly certain it has already happened a lot. But the closest footage I found from what you are looking for is the aftermath of a collision, right here. However, I don't think we'll ever get to record an actual collision. Space is big, you know. Chances of a collision are quite rare. But you can find a lot of simulations on Youtube.
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It's a Needle in a Haysta... In The Pacific Ocean
Sometimes galaxies' gravities catch each other and they slowly merge. Even with billions of stars and planets merging with billions of other stars and planets, its theorized that almost no collisions take place. Point being that although it does happen:
- Space is mostly "empty" and statistical odds of collision are close to nil
- Unlike planets, astroids often have complex trajectories that aren't shared with other solid bodies (two asteroids very rarely even have a similar route, like planets and moons do)
- Humanity's ability to monitor the night sky is limited. We see very little of what happens out there.
Sorry to say but I think you're unlikely to find what you're looking for!
Next Best Bet:
Try Googling asteroid belt collisions? Or collisions in planet's rings? Those areas are rocks and ice, so a collision might be similar to an asteroid/asteroid collision.
No two asteroid collisions would be alike anyhow. They would vary widely. If one is huge and one relatively small, that collision would be very different from a collision where they were the same size. Or head on versus rear-ending, etc. So, you've got some artistic freedom for your video game.
Lastly, you could Google collisions of asteroids that hurdled into terrestrial planets or moons without atmospheres. Watching a collision with Earth or Titan does you no good because the atmosphere changes the dynamic of the impact.
Just remember to think of the physics. If the two sides colliding are well lit, there shouldn't be ice. Well-lit means the sun likely melted the ice. The ice is on the dark side and in the crevasses.
