P/2016 G1 (PanSTARRS)
asteroid
P/2016 G1 (PanSTARRS) was a main-belt asteroid that was destroyed by an impact event on 6 March 2016.
Observational history
It was discovered by Robert Weryk and Richard Wainscoat of the Pan-STARRS 1 survey at Haleakala Observatory. The object was initially thought to be an Encke-type comet because of its diffuse appearance, so it received the periodic comet designation P/2016 G1. After further analysis, what had initially appeared to be a comet's halo turned out to be rubble from a collision. By November 2019, analysis suggested the collision had occurred on 6 March 2016, and the asteroid was struck by a smaller object that may have massed only 1.0 kg (2.2 lb), and was traveling at 11,000 mph (18,000 km/h). P/2016 G1's diameter was between 200 m (660 ft) and 400 m (1,300 ft). The asteroid had completely disintegrated by 2017.
Astronomers were able to use the asteroid's rubble to determine the date of the collision, since the dispersion of dust was inversely proportional to its size.
“P/2016 G1 (PanSTARRS)” enters the record as asteroid. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what PanSTARRS and asteroid can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“P/2016 G1 (PanSTARRS)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, PanSTARRS and asteroid provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q66119540. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2016, 2019 and 2017.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “P/2016 G1 (PanSTARRS)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.