First known interstellar visitor is an ‘oddball’, with a very odd and highly unusual aspect ratio.
From the ASSOCIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY (AURA)
In October astronomers were surprised by a visitor that came racing into our Solar System from interstellar space. Now, researchers using the Gemini Observatory have determined that the first known object to graze our Solar System from beyond is similar to, but definitely not, your average asteroid or comet. “This thing is an oddball,” said Karen Meech of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy who leads an international team studying this interstellar interloper.
Originally denoted A2017 U1, the body now goes by the Hawaiian name ‘Oumuamua, in part because of its discovery by Meech’s team using the Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope on Haleakala in Hawai’i. When discovered in mid-October ‘Oumuamua was only about 85 times the Earth-Moon distance away and its discovery was announced in early November.
Since its discovery ‘Oumuamua has faded from view. The object’s rapidly increasing distance from the Earth and Sun now makes it too faint to be studied by even the largest telescopes.
“Needless to say, we dropped everything so we could quickly point the Gemini telescopes at this object immediately after its discovery,” said Gemini Director Laura Ferrarese who coordinated the Gemini South observations for Meech’s group.
“What we found was a rapidly rotating object, at least the size of a football field, that changed in brightness quite dramatically,” according to Meech. “This change in brightness hints that ‘Oumuamua could be more than 10 times longer than it is wide – something which has never been seen in our own Solar System,” according to Meech.
‘Oumuamua shares similarities with small objects in the outer Solar System, especially the distant worlds of the Kuiper Belt – a region of rocky, frigid worlds far beyond Neptune. “While study of ‘Oumuamua’s colors shows that this body shares characteristics with both Kuiper Belt objects and organic-rich comets and trojan asteroids,” says Meech, “its orbital path says it comes from far beyond.”
The research led by Meech is published in the November 20th online issue of the journal Nature.
‘Oumuamua was visible from Chile and Hawai’i so both Gemini North and South telescopes were on high alert and ready to track the visitor from outer space. “We observed from both sites for three nights, before it sped away and faded from view,” said Ferrarese. Two additional teams obtained data from Gemini North and their results are currently pending publication.
According to our current understanding of planetary system formation, our Solar System ejected comets and asteroids due to interactions with the larger outer planets. It is presumed that other planetary systems do the same and that these visitors might be more common than previously thought. “We estimate that there is always one of these objects of similar size as ‘Oumuamua between the Earth and the Sun at any given time, so up to about 10 per year,” says Robert Jedicke also on Meech’s team.
“These observations allow us to reach into another planetary system to learn about one of its rocky bodies, and compare this object with the asteroids we know throughout our own Solar System”, says Faith Vilas, the solar and planetary research program director at the National Science Foundation who helped support this research.
Surveys like Pan-STARRS and the future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST, currently under construction near the Gemini South telescope in Chile) will undoubtedly increase the detections of these interstellar wanderers.
“The discoveries of rare surprises like ‘Oumuamua from outside our Solar System will be greatly accelerated by the power and grasp of the LSST,” said Richard Green of the US National Science Foundation (NSF). “LSST is going to produce a torrent of data and revolutionize this sort of time domain astronomy when it begins operations early in the next decade,” adds Green. LSST is funded by a partnership with the NSF, the Department of Energy, and the LSST Corporation.
‘Oumuamua loosely means “a messenger that reaches out from the distant past,” fitting the nature of the object’s interstellar origin. In Hawaiian ‘ou means “to reach out for,” while mua means “first” and is repeated for emphasis.
###
The paper: A brief visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar asteroid
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature25020
Abstract:
None of the approximately 750,000 known asteroids and comets is thought to have originated outside our Solar System, but formation models suggest that orbital migration of the giant planets ejected a large fraction of the original planetesimals into interstellar space1. The predicted interstellar number density2 of icy interstellar objects of 2.4 × 10−4 au−3 suggested that these should have been detected by surveys, yet hitherto none had been seen. Many decades of asteroid and comet characterization have yielded formation models that explain the mass distribution, chemical abundances and planetary configuration of today’s Solar System, but until now there has been no way to tell if our Solar System is typical. Here we report observations and subsequent analysis of 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua) that demonstrate the extrasolar trajectory of ‘Oumuamua. Our observations reveal the object to be asteroidal, with no hint of cometary activity despite an approach within 0.25 au of the Sun. Spectroscopic measurements show that the object’s surface is consistent with comets or organic-rich asteroid surfaces found in our own Solar System. Light-curve observations indicate that the object has an extreme oblong shape, with a 10:1 axis ratio and a mean radius of 102±4 m, assuming an albedo of 0.04. Very few objects in our Solar System have such an extreme light curve. The presence of ‘Oumuamua suggests that previous estimates of the density of interstellar objects were pessimistically low. Imminent upgrades to contemporary asteroid survey instruments and improved data processing techniques are likely to produce more interstellar objects in the upcoming years.
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I blame climate change
Oh Mama.
Giant space turd
Beware of the alien who dropped it!
Galactus?
@ur momisugly Lucius..more likely Biggis Diccus from the looks of it.
Don’t they all come from Uranus?
torpedo that missed?
I see an interstellar baguette.
Came here expecting turd and Uranus comments; not disappointed.
I think I saw that picture on the Panera’s menu.
It was coming too pick up John Podesta but after reading his emails, decided to leave him behind.
Doomsday machine. Just kidding
http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Doomsday_Machine_(episode)
Drone on scouting mission. Just throwing that out there, but how would we know it wans’t. Our pictures are crap.
So, the Baby Ruth thing is just an artist’s rendering?
TheLastDemocrat
November 21, 2017 at 12:20 pm
Yes…it’s just an artist’s impression. It is much too far away to get an image.
As I understand it (as an amateur astronomer only) the shape is deduced from the extreme change in brightness as it rotates every 7 hours or so. However, it could equally be a circular object with one side very bright and the other very dark. Quite unusual perhaps…but some solar system moons do have bright and dark sides.
A bit like climate (non)science…you jump to the most dramatic idea…gets lots of interest which helps greatly with funding. Or am I being unkind?
That was my first thought, dark and bright sides.
Seems they were too smart to think of that.
Maybe a General Products #3 Hull?
Naw, sounds more like a #2.
Niven fans here? Awesome.
Of course..
Must be the “Lying Bas….” Niven fans can connect the dots.
Did you read all of them? Remember why the GP Hull is so strong?
Darn right. GP hulls ARE THE BEST!
Maybe Rama…? We should have tried to Rendezvous.
I just reread Rendezvous with Rama about 1 month ago and the description given in the book was almost identical. They caught Rama on the inbound though.
Jeff: That is what I thought of. For the uninitiated:
Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke
https://www.amazon.com/Rendezvous-Rama-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0553287893/
Rama II: The Sequel to Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke, & Gentry Lee
https://www.amazon.com/Rama-II-Sequel-Rendezvous/dp/0553286587/
Rama Revealed Paperback by Arthur C. Clarke
https://www.amazon.com/Rama-Revealed-Arthur-C-Clarke/dp/0553569473/
“The Ramans do everything in threes.”
Jim
Like Jong..Un?
I thought he was Kim Young’un…
After all, he is the latest… and, perhaps, the last of the Kims…
It’s rotating to provide artificial gravity to the explorers inside …
Can Hubble be used to take a closer look at things like this?
It’s Nibiru… we’re all doomed!
Let’s call that NASA guy.
It’s Nobiru.
Paraphrasing somewhat…”That’s no asteroid, it’s a SPACESHIP!”
But yeah, probably being drawn closer to Earth by those human CO2 emissions, so definitely our fault. /sarc
Slartibartfast, and he decided to keep on going after watching the current Earth news.
Rendezvous With Rama
Beat me to it
If it is 10 times longer than it is wide, it could be the “Sentinel”, another of Arthur C Clarke’s creations. The sentinal’s proportions were 9 x 4 x 1, that is 3 squared by 2 squared by 1 squared.
If, as the report says, it by-passed us and is heading away, we are obviously not worth bothering about.
Artistic license with the picture.
If this happens once in our lifetimes it is not an uncommon event so how many of these things are out there.
I thought I could see a faint, spherical atmosphere surrounding the middle 20% of it; undoubtedly, it should be tested for water and see if life has ever existed on it! Or not . . .
If it was an alien spaceship attracted by our radio signals they were about to make contact and then overheard Al Gore talking about climate change, decided Earth had no intelligent life and went on their way.
Most plausible explanation. All of us her are all doing Al a grievous injustice. At least, he can console himself with his Nobel price.
How do we not know that it originated from our own solar system 4 billion yeas ago, and is a new class of asteroid and/or comet that is now double orbiting another nearby solar system with our own? Too bad we couldn’t land a small nuclear powered radio telescope/transmitter that could communicate with Earth for centuries to come, and would give us a front row seat to interstellar space and where it is going. Fascinating!
Well…
I’d say we’d be better off creating a nuclear powerd drive and sending it where we want. It would end up going much faster, and somewhere interesting. Most of space is nothing at all, in fact statistically space is completely empty (and any planets and inhabitants you may see from time to time are probably figments of your imagination).
Even a solar sail would get to a faster speed, I suspect.
You might like to retink that.
Have you seen how fast it was travelling before it got the slingshot and how fast it is now?
Coming in at 15Miles/Sec (54,000Mph) sped up to 27Miles/Sec (97,200Mph) with the slingshot affect.
Acceleration beats velocity hands down. When you are talking traveling 10 or 100 light years (and less gets you very few places) speed is not a factor, only acceleration.
You can get to a significant fraction of light speed even with a solar sail if large enough, I think. That was from sci fi, but an author whose science i trust.
And as a comparison, we are moving around the sun at 30 km a second, and probably 360 km a second away from the ‘center’ of the universe. Perspective is useful (but can be dangerous as the Total Perspective Vortex proved).
Well Well, something else accepted science knew nothing about.
I wonder what else there is they know f*ck all about.
This asteroid should rightly be christened “Lewinski”.
…to be followed by a comet that looks like a blue dress perhaps?
So let me get this ABSOLUTELY straight…once and for all….
‘astronomers’ are ‘unsure’ of how many ‘planets’ we have in our solar system BUT they have have somehow spotted and tracked an object the size of an oil tanker entering our solar system from ‘interstellar space’?
Is that right?
Based on its speed and trajectory, they believe it has come from interstellar space.
Luckily they had their eyes peeled or they would have missed this asteroid. Closer to earth ‘cigar shaped UFO’ are more common.
–So let me get this ABSOLUTELY straight…once and for all….
‘astronomers’ are ‘unsure’ of how many ‘planets’ we have in our solar system BUT they have have somehow spotted and tracked an object the size of an oil tanker entering our solar system from ‘interstellar space’?
Is that right?–
We have have an under funded government program that searches for space rocks that could hit
Earth [and possibly kill millions of people]. And the “Pan-STARRS1 survey telescope” is one of major telescopes which do this:
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/
https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/stats/site_all.html
Look at graph on second link, the light purple is Pan-STARRS1 and it’s finding about 1/2 of the ones being found [that’s what I mean by one of “major telescopes”
So Pan-STARRS1 is designed to look at a wide sky and find dim objects somewhat close to earth [the space rocks that may come back and hit earth]. So this interstellar rock came fairly close to Earth and Pan-STARRS1 found it and tracked it. Then got on the phone to let the really big telescope top look at it. The really big telescopes are normally looking at distant galaxy or say extasolar planets or whatever. Or they don’t look for space rocks- they not designed to look for them- but if given coordinates, then they can point at them…
This object came within 0.2 AU of the sun, where the escape velocity is 42 km/sec. At that point, the asteroid was going 87.7 km/sec. So, yeah, it’s absolutely certain that this came from elsewhere.
The disturbing thing is that it came out of nowhere, from a direction we wouldn’t necessarily be looking (its inclination to the ecliptic was 123 degrees), it was huge, and it was going way faster then any asteroid in our solar system. Had it hit us, we wouldn’t be writing these comments.
This has me more than a little shaken.
The Sun does rotate around the galactic core, so shouldn’t we be looking in the direction that the sun is heading? I’m assuming this thing is headed in the opposite direction that we are going. Sagittarius is rotating in the opposite direction from Orion, so we very well could see more of these.
Of course we live in a pretty awesome solar system. Yay us. We rotate around the Sun so at least half the year we would be either shielded by the Sun or moving away from these types of objects. The two outer Giants are also more likely to be hit than Earth, just based on size, so that’s a bonus.
Rama! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama
What is really great about Wikipedia is that it has the plot summaries of all of the SiFi novels you read 50 years ago, and can no longer remember.
Looks like an Intergalactic Stonebaked Ficelle to me.
http://www.candiz-by-m.com/684-home_default/la-ficelle.jpg
“The discoveries of rare surprises like ‘Oumuamua from outside our Solar System …”
“None of the approximately 750,000 known asteroids and comets is thought to have originated outside our Solar System, but formation models suggest that orbital migration of the giant planets ejected a large fraction of the original planetesimals into interstellar space”
So, it appears to me that it’s total BS to speak of knowing this thing came from another star/planet system, since there’s no possible way to know exactly where each of the hypothetical “large fraction of the original planetesimals” were hypothetically ejected “into interstellar space” . . billions of years ago. I read this whole this as a dorky advertisement for continued funding . .
“Now, researchers using the Gemini Observatory have determined that the first known object to graze our Solar System from beyond …”
“We estimate that there is always one of these objects of similar size as ‘Oumuamua between the Earth and the Sun at any given time, so up to about 10 per year”
Oh, what a coincidence that “we” estimate they are rather common, and that “we” figure this thing is one of them . . as the “models” (AKA fantasies) projected ; )
“The predicted interstellar number density2 of icy interstellar objects of 2.4 × 10−4 au−3 suggested that these should have been detected by surveys, yet hitherto none had been seen. Many decades of asteroid and comet characterization have yielded formation models that explain the mass distribution, chemical abundances and planetary configuration of today’s Solar System, but until now there has been no way to tell if our Solar System is typical.”
Still is no way, even if this shard is assumed to come from “beyond”, if it’s the only one that’s been observed, OBVIOUSLY.
I’d fire the top people behind this BS, to set an example for the kids whose minds they are helping turn into mush with such crap logic.
JohnKnight
November 21, 2017 at 1:51 pm
I agree with the finding bit you mention.
However I think the other planetary system origin idea results from the hyperbolic orbit it has…all things in our solar system have roughly circular or slightly elliptical orbits (our planets) or extremely ellipitical or parabolic orbits (comets). A hyperbolic orbit suggests it has interacted with a star other than the Sun at some stage in it’s long distant past. The hyperbolic orbit alone makes this object extremely unusual and interesting.
The object could have interacted [another] distant object in your solar system and have other kind of interaction within our solar system, but it seems to me it most likely to came from another star system. The lack of this object not being comet make me think it’s been in intergalactic space for quite a while..
Alastair,
“A hyperbolic orbit suggests it has interacted with a star other than the Sun at some stage in it’s long distant past”
Yeah, “suggests”, and I was reacting to the “first known object to graze our Solar System from beyond” yimmer yammer in the news piece . ,. but if many objects were ejected from the system through interaction with other objects, then an object could be “returned” via interaction with one or more of it’s fellow . . ejectoids ; ) or distant orbitoids ; ) or alien ejectoids ; ) . . and there’s also the remote possibility that we’ve effectively “lapped” it (or vice versa) in our “orbiting” around the galaxy since it got flung out there . .
Thanks for the check.
Intergalactic space? I think Interstellar space.
A hyperbola isn’t a closed geometric form? This thing (probably) hasn’t been through these parts before and isn’t coming back — ever —unless it interacts with something that alters its trajectory?
:facepalm: x many.
“None of the approximately 750,000 known asteroids and comets is thought to have originated outside our Solar System”
is thought, ie, clear the obfuscation and they have no flipping idea but want to try sound informed
They have an idea, but not proof. Based on the trajectory and speed, it appears to be from outside our solar system.
and yes JohnKnight, this article is full of bollocks dressed up as some sort of knowledge.
Ugh astronomy is full of complete bunk
Watch out for Tyranids or Orks. (See WH40k.)
The Blunt from Beyond
I propose that we name the oddball cigar-shaped asteroid “William Jefferson Clinton”, in “honor” of our 42nd President.
Ha!
Close but no Cigar?
What are the odds that an interstellar asteriod would pass so close to the Earth?
TA November 21, 2017 at 2:42 pm :
I suspect that it’s probably because they are drawn into the inner solar system by the Sun’s gravity…it just happens that we live in that neighbourhood also! It also wasn’t really that close…inside the orbit of Mercury (at 0.25 AU) so much closer to Mercury and Venus than us.
if that far out the combined gravity of the solar system will pull it
Unless we know how many asteroids there are in interstellar space, it’s impossible to say what the odds are.
It seems to me that the odds would favor their being a lot of asteriods in interstellar space.
there
We would also need to know their velocity vectors. But–if we knew what and where they were and how they were moving, prediction of their motion would be deterministic and not a matter of odds at all. Probability is a misapplied concept in this case.
Over galactic time periods? Virtually 100%. Over our lifetimes? Astronomical.
It’s comes to speak to whales
+1 😀