Oumuamua "The scout" | The first visitor discovered from outside the solar system.

 

Source: ESO/K. Meech et al.

Published: November 20, 2017

The above image might not look like much but in the center of this image, the tiny spec circled in blue between the trails of stars, is the first ever visitor from interstellar space discovered inside our solar system. It was discovered by using the Pan-STARRS telescope at Haleakala Observatory, Hawaii on 19 October 2017 by Robert Weryk. The name given to it is 1I/2017 U1, but it is most popularly known as Oumuamua which is Hawaiian for "the scout". By the time it was discovered it was already on it's way out of the solar system but still there are many things about it that make it interesting. 

An artist's impression of Oumuamua

Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, ESO, M. Kornmesser

Asteroid, comet or something else.

At just a couple of hundred meters long it is not particularly large. At first it looks like a long and thin asteroid, because there is no tail like a comet. But its behavior is quite odd as it was not slowing down as much as predicted while moving away from the sun. This might have been due to "outgassing" which is a process in which material is ejected from the surface and this provides thrust to the object and as of the 1st of June 2018 it was moving at a speed of 114,000 Km/h. Now this behavior is odd because outgassing is something that is attribated to comets, so even though it does not have a tail some think that it must be a comet. There is also speculation that it might have relatively large amounts of Hydrogen on it which is providing this thrust. Another theory, which may or may not be far fetched, is that this was a probe sent by some other intelligent civilization on an exploratory mission, you can be the judge of that. Even if this is true it would have taken it a very very long time, from hundreds to thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years or even more, to reach us. So even the civilization that sent it will be quite different by now. Who knows, they might not even remember sending it out,if they are still there.

Not the only one.

Comet 2I/Borisov

Credits: NASA, ESA and D. Jewitt (UCLA)

The comet 2I/Borisov is only the second object discovered that came from outside the solar system. Although the images above were taken a bit later, it was first discovered on the 12th of October 2019. The image on the left shows the comet along with a galaxy in the background and the image on the right shows it just after it's closest approach to the sun. Unlike Oumuamua, this is certainly a comet as it has the signature tail to prove it.

The discovery of these 2 objects proves how far we have come. Just a few decades ago it was not possible to detect such a small and dim object like Oumuamua especially at the speed it was travelling. As the technology improves we might discover many many more. Who knows, in the far future, voyagers 1 and 2 might mystify some far away civilization just like Oumuamua mystified us.

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