The brightest comet this year has unexpectedly broken up into many smaller pieces. Since then astronomers had been searching in vain to find any fragments left of the nucleus , and watching to see how fast the remaining debris fades. The above image covers only the very tip of an elongated diffuse train of slowly dispersing gas, dust, ice fragments, and gravel. The largest bits remaining of the badly fractured nucleus appear to be less than 30 meters across. This debris train will not collide with the Earth and so will not cause a meteor shower .
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