This is what a comet disintegrating in space looks like

A comet 67 million miles from Earth broke apart as it flew toward the sun and the Hubble Space Telescope snapped some beautiful images of the cosmic destruction from its post above Earth.

The Hubble took the photos over the course of about three days in January 2016, documenting the 25 "building-size blocks" that broke off from Comet 332P, NASA said in a statement.

The fragments sent into space by the comet now form a line of debris about 3,000 miles long.

Because of the Hubble images, scientists might be able to learn more about how and why some comets -- balls of ice and dust considered leftovers from the dawn of the solar system -- break apart as they speed toward the sun in their orbits.

“We know that comets sometimes disintegrate, but we don’t know much about why or how they come apart,” David Jewitt, co-author of a study detailing the comet finding in the Astrophysical Journal Letters said in the statement.

“The trouble is that it happens quickly and without warning, and so we don’t have much chance to get useful data. With Hubble’s fantastic resolution, not only do we see really tiny, faint bits of the comet, but we can watch them change from day to day. And that has allowed us to make the best measurements ever obtained on such an object.”

Via Giphy

Scientists think that Comet 332P may have disintegrated because the sun heated up the object, forcing gas and dust jets to explode from its surface, NASA said.

Those jets started spinning up the comet, making bits of it fly off the 332P's nucleus from October to December 2015.

"In the past, astronomers thought that comets die when they are warmed by sunlight, causing their ices to simply vaporize away,” Jewitt said.

“Either nothing would be left over or there would be a dead hulk of material where an active comet used to be. But it’s starting to look like fragmentation may be more important. In Comet 332P we may be seeing a comet fragmenting itself into oblivion.”