Related papers: The Interstellar Interlopers
The discovery of the third interstellar object (ISO), 3I/ATLAS (`3I'), provides a rare chance to directly observe a small body from another Solar System. Studying its chemistry and dynamics will add to our understanding of how the processes…
Due to their extremely small luminosity compared to the stars they orbit, planets outside our own Solar System are extraordinarily difficult to detect directly in optical light. Careful photometric monitoring of distant stars, however, can…
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…
Observed hyperbolic minor bodies might have an interstellar origin, but they can be natives of the Solar system as well. Fly-bys with the known planets or the Sun may result in the hyperbolic ejection of an originally bound minor body; in…
The modestly eccentric and non-coplanar orbits of the giant planets pose a challenge to solar system formation theories which generally indicate that the giant planets emerged from the protoplanetary disk in nearly perfectly circular and…
Exoplanets observed by the {\it Kepler} telescope exhibit a bi-modal, radius distribution, which is known as the radius gap. We explore an origin of the radius gap, focusing on multi-planet systems. Our simple theoretical argument predicts…
Fast radio bursts are extragalactic, sub-millisecond radio impulses of unknown origin [1,2]. Their dispersion measures, which quantify the observed frequency-dependent dispersive delays in terms of free-electron column densities,…
The first interstellar meteor larger than dust was detected by US government sensors in 2014, identified as an interstellar object candidate in 2019, and confirmed by the Department of Defense in 2022. Here, we describe an additional…
Interstellar matter (ISM) sets the boundary conditions of the heliosphere and dominates the interplanetary medium. The heliosphere configuration has varied over recent history, as the Sun emerged from the Local Bubble and entered a…
The first definitely interstellar object 1I/'Oumuamua (previously A/2017 U1) observed in our solar system provides the opportunity to directly study material from other star systems. Can such objects be intercepted? The challenge of…
1I/'Oumuamua was discovered by the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS 1) on 19 October 2017. Unlike all previously discovered minor planets this object was determined to have eccentricity $e > 1.0$, suggesting…
Exoplanets whose orbit is misaligned with the spin of their host star could have originated from high-speed gas blobs, which are observed in multitudes in nearby supernova remnants and planetary nebulae. These blobs grow in mass and slow…
The halo of the Milky Way provides unique elemental abundance and kinematic information on the first objects to form in the Universe, which can be used to tightly constrain models of galaxy formation and evolution. Although the halo was…
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…
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…
We present high resolution imaging observations of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov (formerly C/2019 Q4) obtained using the Hubble Space Telescope. Scattering from the comet is dominated by a coma of large particles (characteristic size 0.1…
The discovery of the first active interstellar object 2I/Borisov provides an unprecedented opportunity to study planetary formation processes in another planetary system. In particular, spectroscopic observations of 2I allow us to constrain…
(abridged) We study a previously discovered protostellar source that is deeply embedded and drives an energetic molecular outflow. The source, UYSO1, is located close to IRAS 07029-1215 at a distance of ~1 kpc. The multi-wavelength…
Recently, a nitrogen iceberg was proposed as a possible origin for the first interstellar object, 1I/2017 U1, also known as `Oumuamua. Here, we show that the mass budget in exo-Pluto planets necessary to explain the detection of `Oumuamua…
Transitional disks are protoplanetary disks around young stars, with inner holes or gaps which are surrounded by optically thick outer, and often inner, disks. Here we present observations of 62 new transitional disks in the Orion A…