THE FIRST VISITOR FROM INTERSTELLAR SPACE.

On October 19th 2017 , a strange looking object came to visit our solar system and it caught  the eyes of astronomers and scientists and got deceted by  the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS1 telescope , the object was discovered by Robert Weryk . The object was officially named 1i/2017U1 by the International Astronomical Union ( IAU ) and the pan-STARRS team named it oumuamua , in Hawaiian it means a messenger from far away arriving first . 


It was confirmed that it came from out side our solar system by it's orbit as all the objects in our solar system have a closed orbit but this asteroid had a open ended orbit. as it aproaches our sun it gains speed and travells out of our solar system,  but we had only one week of time frame to observe it with the help of ground telescopes , hubble space telescope and spitzer infrared space telescope played a vital role in observing the object . As it crossed our solar system it is observed that it is heading towards the Pegasus constellation.  

The shape of this asteroid is said to be in the shape of a cigar with the colour of reddish hue . The surface of the asteroid is said to have more metal materials . It was called as asteroid until its new measurements found it was accelerating as a sign it behaves more like a comet . The object have more brightness variation as a result it is concluded that its shape is elongated . It is also observed that it is not spinning it is kind of tumbling

Everything was fine until it flew past by our sun , its was found to be accelerating , this acceleration in speed left scientists with many questions like is it a alien space craft visiting our solar system from another star system . Imagine suppose if any other star system far from us have aliens species living and saw our voyager passing through their star system and have many questions about it and that question " are we alone ? " hiting their brains too . Even many astronomers claimed that it is a alien space craft visiting our solar system and published papers too . But if there is a logical answer we cannot take the exotic anwer , as the object was studied further they found out that the object vents out gas particles similar to that of a outgasing comet when heated up and they concluded that this must be the reason for acceleration in the velocity of the object as when it was travelling close to the sun the gas in it got heated up and vented out creating an extra force on the object leading the object to accelerate. 

As it was the first object to visit us from interstellar space it had many hopes for it like it may be some sort of a alien space craft and many more . But we were not abled to observe it or study all its minor detail as we had very limited time of only one week  . But in future it would be nice if we had instant space missions to observe this kind of rare astronomical events but with government space agencies it takes a decade for a proposal to be approved , may be not so in distant future this kind of missions may be carried out by private space companies and even government agencies.  The discovery of oumuamua followed by the discovery of 2I/Borisov it is the first rouge comet and second interstellar space object visiting our solar system . 

Finally We said good bye to oumuamua on 9 September 2017 as that was the day it passed by the closest point to our sun and away from our solar system . We wish oumuamua all the best on its journey towards the Pegasus constellation. 

Comments

Popular Posts