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Old 26-10-2017, 03:51 PM
gary
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Comet C/2017 U1 - MPC compute may be first observed interstellar comet?

Kelly Beatty reports today that C/2017 U1, first spotted on October 18th 2017, may, according to preliminary findings of the Minor Planet Center (MPC),
be the first observed interstellar comet.

See http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...stellar-comet/
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Old 21-11-2017, 09:56 PM
geolindon (Lindon)
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An update on follow up results = its probably 10x longer than wide

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...stellar-cigar/
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Old 22-11-2017, 08:45 AM
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Thanks again Gary for posting all this exciting stuff.
I can't understand how this thing can have an orbit if its from interstellar space...I may have missed it but do they suggest anywhere what is the center of the orbit...it can only orbit in relation to the solar system and outside of that I expect it would orbit the center of the galaxy in the same way we do.
Curious.
Alex
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Old 28-11-2017, 05:09 PM
geolindon (Lindon)
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G day Alex,

i agree, this is really cool stuff. i held off responding thinking a real boffin would - none has so here is my take.

i sourced places like NASA, Wikipedia and S&T (and their references) - so not sure exactly where i came up with the following;
The Solar System is likely the first star system that ʻOumuamua has encountered since being ejected from its birth star system potentially several billion years ago.

so i think it would be "rogue" and randomly moving around though at similar speed as our neighbouring stars. it seems there is a substantial population of "rogue" bodies of all/most types.

cool to wonder: wot are the odds of it close encountering the Sun and where is it off to after its sling?

keep an eye out, L
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Old 28-11-2017, 05:55 PM
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Hi Lyndon
Thank you for taking the time to look into the information available on this object.
Alex
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Old 30-11-2017, 09:31 AM
geolindon (Lindon)
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On average, a 150 m space rock hits Earth every 16,000 years and makes a 2.4 km crater. We sure didn't see this one coming.

What confidence we had in NEO monitoring to keep us safer must now be reduced.
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Old 30-11-2017, 12:36 PM
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How much TNT to blow such a hole?
Alex
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Old 30-11-2017, 03:46 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by geolindon View Post
On average, a 150 m space rock hits Earth every 16,000 years and makes a 2.4 km crater. We sure didn't see this one coming.

What confidence we had in NEO monitoring to keep us safer must now be reduced.

One of my favorite videos of asteroid discoveries, dated 2010... I wish there were an updated (2017) version. Though there is a current map (2016).

Just noticed that there is a 8K version updated to 2015...


Late Edit : 01DEC2017

Trolling around the 'net and found this gem...


Last edited by OICURMT; 02-12-2017 at 04:22 AM. Reason: Update to 2015 version and included Gaia
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Old 14-12-2017, 10:09 AM
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Breakthrough Listen project will use time on Greenbank to check for radio emissions

In the Guardian today, Science Editor, Ian Sample, reports that the
Green Bank radiotelescope in West Virginia is going to have a listen, just
in case there are any radio signals being emitted from the cigar-shaped object.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ian Sample, The Guardian
Scientists on the Breakthrough Listen project, which searches for evidence of alien civilisations, said the Green Bank telescope would monitor the object, named ‘Oumuamua, from Wednesday. The first phase of observations is expected to last 10 hours and will tune in to four different radio transmission bands.

“Most likely it is of natural origin, but because it is so peculiar, we would like to check if it has any sign of artificial origin, such as radio emissions,” said Avi Loeb, professor of astronomy at Harvard University and an adviser to the Breakthrough Listen project. “If we do detect a signal that appears artificial in origin, we’ll know immediately.”
Article here :-
https://www.theguardian.com/science/...ien-technology
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Old 15-12-2017, 05:38 AM
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Originally Posted by gary View Post
In the Guardian today, Science Editor, Ian Sample, reports that the
Green Bank radiotelescope in West Virginia is going to have a listen, just
in case there are any radio signals being emitted from the cigar-shaped object.
Reality imitating fiction... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama

I still maintain that this trilogy (+1) would make a GREAT series of movies. I'm disappointed it hasn't been done yet.
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Old 15-12-2017, 03:56 PM
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Nola Taylor Redd has a December 13, 2017 article at Scientific American
on how ‘Oumuamua, could be a bonanza for researchers.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nola Taylor Redd, Scientific American
Telescopes swiftly targeted the object, with most researchers expecting to see a cometary tail trailing from an icy visitor as it approached the sun. But to their surprise, ‘Oumuamua showed none. Instead, it looked more like an asteroid. “It does not a resemble a comet—it had no tail whatsoever," says Karen Meech, who studies comets at the University of Hawai’i at Mnoa. Meech used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories to examine the mysteriously inert space tourist.

Asteroid or comet—why does it matter? The answer ties into our understanding of how planetary systems grow over time in their natal “protoplanetary” disks around young stars. Newborn giant planets can jostle one another, using their gravity to push each other around. They also lord their size over their smaller neighboring worlds—and especially over the kilometer-scale objects called “planetesimals” left behind as debris from the planet-forming process. When a giant planet throws its weight around, more than half of these planetesimals can wind up hurled from the system. Because most of a typical protoplanetary disk is icy—in 2016 Meech used solar system observations to estimate there were as many as 10,000 icy objects for every rocky object—icy objects should dominate the ejecta.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nola Taylor Redd, Scientific American
‘Oumuamua’s oddball spin could be related to its origins as well. According to new research posted on the preprint server arXiv.org, the visitor is tumbling willy-nilly rather than smoothly rotating on its axis. The researchers, who declined to comment due to embargo concerns, state in their paper “1I/‘Oumuamua was likely set tumbling within its parent planetary system, and will remain tumbling well after it has left ours.” ‘Oumuamua’s motion, they speculate, could be due to a long-ago collision with another body or the extreme tidal torqueing it may have experienced during its ejection from its parent planetary system. Alternatively, its spin could come from the jetlike outgassing of icy material vaporizing in sunlight—the process that creates a cometary tail.

But, again, the object did not appear to sprout a tail when it closely approached our sun. If indeed ‘Oumuamua is an icy body, how did it avoid growing a cometary tail? David Jewitt, an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angles, suspects any ice might be buried under a layer of material damaged by the charged particles known as cosmic rays that bombarded ‘Oumuamua while it traveled through space.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...etary-science/
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Old 18-12-2017, 04:04 PM
geolindon (Lindon)
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So the Greenbank Listeners countenanced that this maybe a "spacecraft" seriously enough to invest 10+ hours of precious 'scope time

at first i scoffed, but then in the interest of science, ya neva know! i am for going against the wagon/commonly held idea. then i scoffed again

soz Alex, didya work out how big a mtn of TNT required?

L
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Old 18-12-2017, 10:27 PM
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Originally Posted by geolindon View Post

soz Alex, didya work out how big a mtn of TNT required?

L
Three times as much as deemed safe.
Alex
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Old 19-12-2017, 11:02 AM
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Maybe more like a comet - paper in Nature Astronomy

In a paper in Nature Astronomy today, Fitzsimmons et. al. report spectroscopic
analysis shows that an icy interior with a mantle crust for the object -
consistent with the types of insulating mantle produced by
long-term cosmic ray exposure for objects in our own outer Solar System -
cannot be ruled out.

So if it needs to be neatly placed in a category box, it may be classified
as a comet despite the lack of outburst as it rounded the Sun.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fitzsimmons, Nature
Spectroscopy and thermal modelling of the first interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua

ABSTRACT

During the formation and evolution of the Solar System, significant numbers of cometary and asteroidal bodies were ejected into interstellar space.

It is reasonable to expect that the same happened for planetary systems other than our own.

Detection of such interstellar objects would allow us to probe the planetesimal formation processes around other stars, possibly together with the effects of long-term exposure to the interstellar medium.

1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua is the first known interstellar object, discovered by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in October 2017.

The discovery epoch photometry implies a highly elongated body with radii of ~ 200 × 20 m when a comet-like geometric albedo of 0.04 is assumed.

The observable interstellar object population is expected to be dominated by comet-like bodies in agreement with our spectra, yet the reported inactivity of 'Oumuamua implies a lack of surface ice.

Here, we report spectroscopic characterization of ‘Oumuamua, finding it to be variable with time but similar to organically rich surfaces found in the outer Solar System.

We show that this is consistent with predictions of an insulating mantle produced by long-term cosmic ray exposure4.

An internal icy composition cannot therefore be ruled out by the lack of activity, even though ‘Oumuamua passed within 0.25 au of the Sun.
Paper here (requires subscription) :-
http://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-017-0361-4

Story by Tereza Pultarova at space.com :-
https://www.space.com/39129-oumuamua...-disguise.html
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Old 28-12-2017, 02:19 PM
geolindon (Lindon)
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a nice update by S&T

some early postulations were a bit too quick off to print.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...ng-and-silent/

'The Green Bank search didn't turn up any radio "beacons" or other transmissions in narrow frequency bands, though the analysis of three of the bands isn't complete. Honestly, the Breakthrough Listen team didn't expect to pick up alien broadcasts from this interloper — but, hey, why not try, right?'
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