It wasn’t really that big – only about a quarter of a mile long. And yes it was going somewhat fast, say 55 miles per second. (Actually, too fast to get caught in the Suns gravity.) It was unexpected, ask anyone from Rob Werk at University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, to NASA’s JPL to Europe’s ESA. It was also from outside of this solar system. This interstellar visito, or small space rock, or A/2017 U1 as it is known, slipped in, and is trying to slip out just as quickly.
It was discovered on October 19 by Dr. Weryk when he was reviewing images captured by the Pan STARRS 1 telescope, located on the island of Maui. While first thoughts were of an NEO (near Earth object), it was soon realized that it was both too fast and it moved a tad differently than either a comet or asteroid. It was alien. (ie. not of this solar system)
Oddly enough, such an occurrence has been predicted, just never recorded. You see in astrodynamics or celestial mechanics, a hyperbolic trajectory is the trajectory of an object around a central body with enough speed to escape the central object's gravitational pull. The name comes from the fact that if one were to look to Newtonian theory such an orbit would be likened the shape of a hyperbola.
For the past few days Dr. Farnocchia, a navigational engineer for NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. , has been calculating the strange object’s path. He spoke of it having a hyperbolic orbitand said that shows that it came from outside the solar system and will leave the solar system.
And so now it’s moving away at about 25 miles per second and will exit the solar system at about 16 miles per second. To give you an idea of what that means – it is faster than the current speed of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, our first spacecraft interstellar space traveler, or as much as three times faster than the escape trajectory for the New Horizons spacecraft.
It has become teacher to the worlds scientists who now are all scrambling to get as much data as they can before it is gone. What they are looking for? Well, it may be made up of completely different material than the asteroids and comets that we have studied. That and where did it came from?
Why did this Alien Object surprise us so? This object came into the solar system blocked by the brightness of the sun. To this, NASA’s planetary defense officer says that an NEO is many times more likely to hit us than is a rogue rock. Uhm, I am worried about anything that comes flying really fast from an area obscured by the Sun. Just out of curiosity, are we doing anything about that?
Visitor
It wasn’t really that big – only about a quarter of a mile long. And yes it was going somewhat fast, say 55 miles per second. (Actually, too fast to get caught in the Suns gravity.) It was unexpected, ask anyone from Rob Werk at University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, to NASA’s JPL to Europe’s ESA. It was also from outside of this solar system. This interstellar visito, or small space rock, or A/2017 U1 as it is known, slipped in, and is trying to slip out just as quickly.
It was discovered on October 19 by Dr. Weryk when he was reviewing images captured by the Pan STARRS 1 telescope, located on the island of Maui. While first thoughts were of an NEO (near Earth object), it was soon realized that it was both too fast and it moved a tad differently than either a comet or asteroid. It was alien. (ie. not of this solar system)
Oddly enough, such an occurrence has been predicted, just never recorded. You see in astrodynamics or celestial mechanics, a hyperbolic trajectory is the trajectory of an object around a central body with enough speed to escape the central object's gravitational pull. The name comes from the fact that if one were to look to Newtonian theory such an orbit would be likened the shape of a hyperbola.
For the past few days Dr. Farnocchia, a navigational engineer for NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. , has been calculating the strange object’s path. He spoke of it having a hyperbolic orbitand said that shows that it came from outside the solar system and will leave the solar system.
And so now it’s moving away at about 25 miles per second and will exit the solar system at about 16 miles per second. To give you an idea of what that means – it is faster than the current speed of the Voyager 1 spacecraft, our first spacecraft interstellar space traveler, or as much as three times faster than the escape trajectory for the New Horizons spacecraft.
It has become teacher to the worlds scientists who now are all scrambling to get as much data as they can before it is gone. What they are looking for? Well, it may be made up of completely different material than the asteroids and comets that we have studied. That and where did it came from?
Why did this Alien Object surprise us so? This object came into the solar system blocked by the brightness of the sun. To this, NASA’s planetary defense officer says that an NEO is many times more likely to hit us than is a rogue rock. Uhm, I am worried about anything that comes flying really fast from an area obscured by the Sun. Just out of curiosity, are we doing anything about that?
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