English
Related papers

Related papers: The Interstellar Interlopers

200 papers

In 2017, 1I/`Oumuamua was identified as the first known interstellar object in the Solar System. Although typical cometary activity tracers were not detected, `Oumuamua exhibited a significant non-gravitational acceleration. To date there…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-08-30 Jennifer Bergner , Darryl Seligman

The detections of 1I/Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov within just two years demonstrate impressively that interstellar objects (ISOs) must be common in the Milky Way. Once released from their parent system, these ISOs travel for Gyr through…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-11-18 Susanne Pfalzner , Melvyn B. Davies , Giorgi Kokaia , Michele Bannister

The first discovered interstellar small object, `Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1), presents unique physical properties of extremely elongated geometric shape and dual characteristics of an asteroid and a comet. These properties suggest a possible…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-02-12 Xi-Ling Zheng , Ji-Lin Zhou

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

1I/`Oumuamua is the first confirmed interstellar body in our Solar System. Here we report on observations of `Oumuamua made with the Spitzer Space Telescope on 2017 November 21--22 (UT). We integrated for 30.2~hours at 4.5 micron (IRAC…

`Oumuamua (1I/2017 U1) is the first object of interstellar origin observed in the Solar System. Recently, \citet{Micheli2018} reported that `Oumuamua showed deviations from a Keplerian orbit at a high statistical significance. The observed…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2018-11-28 Shmuel Bialy , Abraham Loeb

The earliest confirmed interstellar object, `Oumuamua, was discovered in the Solar System by Pan-STARRS in 2017, allowing for a calibration of the abundance of interstellar objects of its size $\sim 100\;$ m. This was followed by the…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2022-09-01 Amir Siraj , Abraham Loeb

In single star systems like our own Solar system, comets dominate the mass budget of bodies that are ejected into interstellar space, since they form further away and are less tightly bound. However 1I/`Oumuamua, the first interstellar…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2018-03-30 Alan P. Jackson , Daniel Tamayo , Noah Hammond , Mohamad Ali-Dib , Hanno Rein

Within just two years, two interstellar objects (ISOs) - Oumuamuas and Borisov - have been discovered. Large quantities of planetesimals form as a by-product of planet formation. Therefore, it seems likely that ISOs are former planetesimals…

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics · Physics 2021-07-14 Susanne Pfalzner , Luis Aizpuru Vargas , Asmita Bhandare , Dimitri Veras

Models of the Solar System evolution show that almost all the primitive material leftover from the formation of the planets was ejected to the interstellar space as a result of dynamical instabilities. Accordingly, minor bodies should also…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2017-12-04 Michal Drahus , Piotr Guzik , Waclaw Waniak , Barbara Handzlik , Sebastian Kurowski , Siyi Xu

Oumuamua, the first known object of extrasolar origin seen to enter our Solar System, has multiple unusual characteristics that, taken together, are very difficult to explain with conventional astronomical entities like asteroids and…

Popular Physics · Physics 2023-01-10 Ben Zuckerman

The first interstellar object observed in our solar system, 1I/2017 U1 (`Oumuamua), exhibited a number of peculiar properties, including extreme elongation and acceleration excess. Recently, \cite{Seligman:2020vb} proposed that the object…

Astrophysics of Galaxies · Physics 2020-08-26 Thiem Hoang , Abraham Loeb

Exocomets are small bodies releasing gas and dust which orbit stars other than the Sun. Their existence was first inferred from the detection of variable absorption features in stellar spectra in the late 1980s using spectroscopy. More…

`Oumuamua and Borisov were the first two interstellar objects confirmed in the Solar system. The upcoming commencement of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space of Time (LSST) will enhance greatly the discovery rate of…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2020-11-11 Amir Siraj , Abraham Loeb

We present observations of the interstellar interloper 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua) taken during its 2017 October flyby of Earth. The optical colors B-V = 0.70$\pm$0.06, V-R = 0.45$\pm$0.05, overlap those of the D-type Jovian Trojan asteroids and…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2017-12-13 David Jewitt , Jane Luu , Jayadev Rajagopal , Ralf Kotulla , Susan Ridgway , Wilson Liu , Thomas Augusteijn

1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua is the first interstellar object recorded inside the Solar System. We try to answer the main question: where does it come from? To this aim we searched for close encounters between 'Oumuamua and all nearby stars with…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2018-02-28 Piotr A. Dybczyński , Małgorzata Królikowska

The discovery of two interstellar objects passing through the Solar System, 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, implies that a galactic population exists with a spatial number density of order $\sim0.1$ au$^{-3}$. The forthcoming Rubin Observatory…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-10-27 Dušan Marčeta , Darryl Z. Seligman

If interstellar objects originate in protoplanetary disks, they can be used to calibrate the fraction of mass that such disks eject. The discoveries of interstellar objects 1I/`Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov, taken together with rogue planets…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-09-01 Amir Siraj , Abraham Loeb

Interstellar small bodies are unique probes into the histories of exoplanetary systems. One hypothesized class of interlopers are "Jurads," exo-comets released into the Milky Way during the post-main sequence as the thermally-pulsing…

At present, there exists no consensus in the astronomical community regarding either the bulk composition or the formation mechanism for the interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 ('Oumuamua). With the goal of assessing the merits of the various…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-11-24 W. Garrett Levine , Samuel H. C. Cabot , Darryl Seligman , Gregory Laughlin