Sometimes looking for one thing a person and the humanity in general finds another one that is not less interesting. The same case happened while the scientists searching for aliens’ signals in the 100$ million Breakthrough Starshot project came across a very unusual object. Before finding it astronomers just had theories about existence of such kind of bodies and the hypothesis that one body like this crosses our star system once a year. But because they are faint it was difficult to disclose them.
The first detection of the unknown object took place in October, 2017 due to Pan-STARRS telescope which is in Hawaii. The most fascinating thing about all of this was the fact that the object crossed our solar system. Like a visitor from the outer and far interstellar space the body is planned to pass by our planet and then move away.
HOW DOES THE OBJECT LOOK LIKE?
It is an around 400 meters long body moving with the speed of 158,36 km per hour. The width of the asteroid is 10 times less than its length and this puzzles the scientists who have never seen before the object with such great ration difference. They are trying to find an explaination of this phenomenon.
As it was the first object never detected before, the International Astronomical Union had to think over its unique number, thus, putting a start to counting of similar bodies. So it is official number became 1l/2017 U1, but because it was spotted by a Hawaiian equipment, it was given a local name sounding as «‘Oumuamua». The meaning of it is «a messenger from afar arriving first».
‘Oumuamua has a elongate shape reminding a fish, to my mind, and is of dark-red color. At first, the scientists thought that it was a piece of ice as in the space there are a lot of object made of gas and ice, but it was observed that the asteroid did not leave any «tail» and dust after itself whe approaching to the sun. So that made astronomers presuppose that the material of which it is composed is very dense and might be metal or rock without any water or ice traces. Moreover, the scientists noticed changes in its brightness as it spins on it axis each 7,7 hours.
As for its asteroid definition, this issue is discussed by the astronomers, cause 'Oumuamua does not possess standard spectroscopic signs. Though they not ordinary structure is the result of long presence in the outer space when all the water from the object evaporates with time and the surface turns reddish a bit thanks to carbon compounds.
TRAVELING DISTANCE OF 'OUMUAMUA
The astronomers claim that before entering our solar system the object had travelled for millions of years.
Its projected pathway looks like this:
The peculiarity of the object is that is was not influenced by gravitational force like other asteroids and comets, and will go back to the interstellar space after a few months pop up in our solar system. Actually, it was in our solar system since August 2017, but was detected only in October.
It is calculated that on May 2018 ‘Oumuamua will go near Jupiter’s orbit and on January 2019 it will be noticed close to the Saturn.
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It is obvious that 'Oumuamua is the most significant occurrence in 2017! There is an active design and construction of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile which will give opportunity to track similar objects in future.
So the scientists are keeping an eye on this extraordinary object and we are keeping an eye on the news they will tell us about it.