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Related papers: The New Astronomical Frontier of Interstellar Obje…

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The properties of the first-discovered interstellar object (ISO), 1I/2017 (`Oumuamua), differ from both Solar System asteroids and comets, casting doubt on a protoplanetary disk origin. In this study, we investigate the possibility that it…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-05-05 W. Garrett Levine , Gregory Laughlin

Planetesimals inevitably bear the signatures of their natal environment, preserving in their composition a record of the metallicity of their system's original gas and dust, albeit one altered by the formation process. When planetesimals…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2022-01-04 Chris Lintott , Michele T. Bannister , J. Ted Mackereth

The first interstellar objects, 1I/`Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov and 3I/ATLAS, were discovered over the past decade. We follow the trajectories of known interstellar objects in the gravitational potential of the Milky Way galaxy to constrain their…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2025-08-08 Shokhruz Kakharov , Abraham Loeb

The recent discovery of a third interstellar object (ISO) 3I/ATLAS, following 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, has raised questions about the nature and origin of these enigmatic objects. With the Vera C. Rubin Observatory expected to discover…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-09-09 Oem Trivedi , Abraham Loeb

The discoveries of two Interstellar Objects (ISOs) in recent years has generated significant interest in constraining their physical properties and the mechanisms behind their formation. However, their ephemeral passages through our Solar…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2022-08-02 Samuel H. C. Cabot , Gregory Laughlin

Comets and asteroids have long captured human curiosity, and until recently, all documented examples belonged to our Solar System. That changed with the discovery of the first known interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua), in 2017. Two…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-04-03 Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez , Damya Souami , Maria Gritsevich , Marcin Wesołowski , Gennady Borisov

With the recent discoveries of interstellar objects `Oumuamua and Borisov traversing the solar system, understanding the dynamics of interstellar objects is more pressing than ever. These detections have highlighted the possibility that…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-09-24 Kevin J Napier , Fred C Adams , Konstantin Batygin

In this chapter we review our knowledge of our galaxy's cometary population outside our Oort Cloud - exocomets and Interstellar Objects (ISOs). We start with a brief overview of planetary system formation, viewed as a general process around…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-04-03 Alan Fitzsimmons , Karem Meech , Luca Matrà , Susanne Pfalzner

The discovery of the first two macroscopic interstellar objects (ISOs) passing through the Solar System has opened entirely new perspectives in planetary science. The exploration of these objects offers a qualitatively new insight into the…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-01-24 Dušan Marčeta

The recently discovered minor body 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua) is the first known object in our Solar System that is not bound by the Sun's gravity. Its hyperbolic orbit (eccentricity greater than unity) strongly suggests that it originated…

Imminent impactors are natural bodies discovered in space before impacting the Earth. They provide a rare opportunity to characterize individual near-Earth objects (NEOs) in great detail as asteroids in space, meteors in Earth's atmosphere…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-04-09 Ian Chow , Mario Jurić , R. Lynne Jones , Kathleen Kiker , Joachim Moeyens , Peter G. Brown , Aren N. Heinze , Jacob A. Kurlander

The recently discovered first high velocity hyperbolic objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, have raised the question about near term missions to Interstellar Objects. In situ spacecraft exploration of these…

Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics · Physics 2021-08-05 Andreas M. Heina , T. Marshall Eubanks , Manasvi Lingam , Adam Hibberd , Dan Fries , Jean Schneider , Pierre Kervella , Robert Kennedy , Nikolaos Perakis , Bernd Dachwald

The local detection rate of interstellar objects can allow for estimations of the total number of similar objects bound by the Milky Way thin disk. If interstellar objects of artificial origin are discovered, the estimated total number of…

Popular Physics · Physics 2023-04-26 Carson Ezell , Abraham Loeb

We provide a calculation of Pan-STARRS' ability to detect objects similar to the interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 (hereafter 'Oumuamua), including the most detectable approach vectors and the effect of object size on detection efficiency.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2018-03-08 Aaron Do , Michael A. Tucker , John Tonry

Object 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua) is the first interstellar small body ever discovered in the solar system. By the time of discovery, it had already passed perihelion. To investigate the behavior of `Oumuamua around perihelion, we searched for…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-01-08 Man-To Hui , Matthew M. Knight

We study the dynamical properties of objects in hyperbolic orbits passing through the inner Solar system in the context of two different potential sources: interstellar space and the Oort cloud. We analytically derive the probability…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-01-08 Arika Higuchi , Eiichiro Kokubo

Based on the occurrence rates implied by the discoveries of 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, the forthcoming Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) should detect $\ge1$ interstellar objects every year (Hoover et al. 2021). We…

The discovery of the first interstellar object passing through the Solar System, 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua), provoked intense and continuing interest from the scientific community and the general public. The faintness of 'Oumuamua, together…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2019-07-04 Oumuamua ISSI Team

During the formation of our solar system, a large number of planetesimals were ejected into interstellar space by gravitational encounters with the planets. Debris disks observations and numerical simulations indicate that many other…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2022-05-10 Amaya Moro-Martín

The interstellar object population of the Milky Way is a product of its stars. However, what is in fact a complex structure in the Solar neighbourhood has traditionally in ISO studies been described as smoothly distributed. Using a debiased…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-09-03 Matthew J. Hopkins , Michele T. Bannister , Chris Lintott