![]() The most elongated objects we have seen to date are no more than three times longer than they are wide. No known asteroid or comet from our solar system varies so widely in brightness, with such a large ratio between length and width. Urgency for viewing from ground-based telescopes was vital to get the best data.Ĭombining the images from the FORS instrument on the ESO telescope using four different filters with those of other large telescopes, a team of astronomers led by Karen Meech of the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii found that ‘Oumuamua varies in brightness by a factor of ten as it spins on its axis every 7.3 hours. Immediately after its discovery, telescopes around the world, including ESO’s Very Large Telescope in Chile and other observatories around the world were called into action to measure the object’s orbit, brightness and color. “This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own.” “For decades we’ve theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now – for the first time – we have direct evidence they exist,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. They suggest this unusual object had been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. ![]() The observations and analyses were funded in part by NASA and appear in the Nov. While its elongated shape is quite surprising, and unlike asteroids seen in our solar system, it may provide new clues into how other solar systems formed. That aspect ratio is greater than that of any asteroid or comet observed in our solar system to date. The asteroid, named ‘Oumuamua by its discoverers, is up to one-quarter mile (400 meters) long and highly-elongated-perhaps 10 times as long as it is wide. Now, new data reveal the interstellar interloper to be a rocky, cigar-shaped object with a somewhat reddish hue.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |