Related papers: The Interstellar Interlopers
Star-formation in the outer Galaxy is thought to be different from the inner Galaxy, as it is subject to different environmental parameters such as metallicity, interstellar radiation field, or mass surface density that all change with…
Star formation in interacting systems may take place in various locations, from the dust--enshrouded core of Ultraluminous Infrared Galaxies to more unusual places such as the debris of colliding galaxies expelled into the intergalactic…
Thousands of transiting exoplanets have been discovered to date, thanks in great part to the {\em Kepler} space mission. As in all populations, and certainly in the case of exoplanets, one finds unique objects with distinct characteristics.…
Globular clusters produce orders of magnitude more millisecond pulsars per unit mass than the Galactic disk. Since the first cluster pulsar was uncovered twenty years ago, at least 138 have been identified - most of which are binary…
The stellar halo contains some of the oldest stars in the Milky Way galaxy and in the universe. The detections of `Oumuamua, CNEOS 2014-01-08, and interstellar dust serve to calibrate the production rate of interstellar objects. We study…
We suggest that the kinematics and properties of interstellar object A/2017 U1 point towards its formation in a protoplanetary disk in the ~45 Myr-old Carina or Columba young stellar associations, and subsequent ejection with a low peculiar…
Context. Three kilometer-sized interstellar objects (ISOs) have been detected transiting the Solar System, and spacecraft have directly measured micrometer-scale interstellar dust (ISD). Yet no intermediate-size interstellar meteoroids have…
The upcoming commencement of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space of Time (LSST) will greatly enhance the discovery rate of interstellar objects (ISOs). `Oumuamua and Borisov were the first two ISOs confirmed in the Solar…
`Oumuamua, the first detected interstellar visitor to the solar system, exhibits non-gravitational acceleration in its trajectory. Ruling out other means of propulsion, such as the evaporation of material via a cometary tail, it has been…
We present Hubble Space Telescope observations of a photometric outburst and splitting event in interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. The outburst, first reported with the comet outbound at 2.8 AU (Drahus et al.~2020), was caused by the expulsion…
We simulate the formation and evolution of Oort clouds around the 200 nearest stars (within 16pc according to the Gaia DR2) database. This study is performed by numerically integrating the planets and minor bodies in orbit around the parent…
We report the first evidence of an on-going collision between two star clusters in our Galaxy, namely IC 4665 and Collinder 350. These are open clusters located at a distance of ~330 pc from the Sun and ~100 pc above the Galactic plane, and…
Compact elliptical galaxies form a rare class of stellar system (~30 presently known) characterized by high stellar densities and small sizes and often harboring metal-rich stars. They were thought to form through tidal stripping of massive…
Schneider (2018) explored the possibility that 'Oumuamua is a Solar System object, and concluded that if it is, it must have been scattered by "another, yet unknown planet." I provide an extremely conservative upper limit on post-scattering…
Interstellar hydrides -- that is, molecules containing a single heavy element atom with one or more hydrogen atoms -- were among the first molecules detected outside the solar system. They lie at the root of interstellar chemistry, being…
Observations of interstellar gas and dust towards nearby stars and within the solar system show that the Sun is embedded in a warm diffuse partially-ionized cloud. This cloud is the leading edge of a flow of interstellar matter (ISM)…
3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object discovered to date, following 1I/'Oumuamua and 2I/Borisov. Its unusually high excess velocity and active cometary nature make it a key probe of the Galactic population of icy planetesimals.…
Measurements by dust detectors on interplanetary spacecraft appear to indicate a substantial flux of interstellar particles with masses exceeding 10^{-12}gram. The reported abundance of these massive grains cannot be typical of interstellar…
Using Non-Redundant Mask interferometry (NRM), we searched for binary companions to objects previously classified as Transitional Disks (TD). These objects are thought to be an evolutionary stage between an optically thick disk and…
The first definite interstellar object observed in our solar system was discovered in October of 2017 and was subsequently designated 1I/'Oumuamua. In addition to its extrasolar origin, observations and analysis of this object indicate some…