'Oumuamua - Interstellar Asteroid

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On 19 October, 2017, astronomer Robert Weryk, using the telescope at Haleakala Observatory on the island of Maui, Hawaii, detected an object travelling at high speed. Firstly classified a comet, its orbit showed that it had not originated from our own Solar System. This could mean only one thing, it was the first detected interstellar visitor, and it quickly became hot news!

Scouting

Anything newly-discovered is classified by researchers so it can be easily accessed by the scientific community. Originally catalogued as comet C/2017 U1, this was changed to asteroid A/2017 U1 when no tail could be detected. When it became clear that the object was alien, a brand new classification was required. On 6 November, 2017, it was logged as the first of a new class of Interstellar Object. So, the official name is 1I/2017 U1 ('I' for interstellar), but the public at large prefer common names. The visitor was quickly dubbed 'Oumuamua, which is Hawaiian for 'scout', no doubt before wags could name it after anything from Star Trek or Star Wars.


'Oumuamua might have been easy to detect, but it was incredibly hard to see visually. For a start, at only 27th magnitude1, it was too dim for anything but the very best telescopes, like the one at Keck, and the Hubble Space Telescope, so amateur astronomers had no chance of capturing a glimpse. If you would you like to see an artist's impression of 'Oumuamua, there's this image at the Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD) website.

dark red
1The naked-eye limit is 6.0 mag.

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