August 18, 2000   On August 5, 2000, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) captured images of the comet LINEAR after it exploded, and now scientists are theorizing that the comet's close proximity to the sun led to its dissolution (because of melting of the ice that probably held the comet together). The picture below is a HST picture of the fragments of the LINEAR comet. Click here for a Planetary Society article on this subject.