For practically as long as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has circled Earth, astronomers have wanted to use it to see a comet as it's breaking apart. Many researchers have proposed such observations in the past, but because comet breakups are hard to anticipate, no one had achieved it — until now. By a stroke of luck, a team of scientists has, at long last, caught one in the act. The researchers looked at the comet, C/2025 K1 (ATLAS), only because there were some technical issues preventing them from observing their first choice. When John Noonan, the co-investigator on the study, saw the images Hubble had taken, he was in for the ultimate surprise. Instead of one space snowball, he saw four. "We knew this was something really, really special," said Noonan, a research professor at Auburn University, in a statement. Astronomers have sought a fragmenting comet for years because it's one of the few opportunities they have to see what's hidden inside these ancient icy objects.…