The detection of two celestial interlopers careening through our solar system has scientists eagerly anticipating more
The first interstellar interloper detected passing through the Solar System, 1l/‘Oumuamua, came within 24 million miles of the Sun in 2017. It’s difficult to know exactly what ‘Oumuamua looked like, but it was probably oddly shaped and elongated, as depicted in this illustration. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, JOSEPH OLMSTED , FRANK SUMMERS On October 17 and 18, 2017, an unusual object sped across the field of view of a large telescope perched near the summit of a volcano on the Hawaiian island of Maui.
2I/Borisov appears as a fuzzy blue dot in front of a distant spiral galaxy in this November 2019 image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope when the object was approximately 200 million miles from Earth. CREDIT: NASA, ESA, AND D. JEWITT At least since the beginning of the 18th century, astronomers have considered the possibility that interstellar objects exist.
The interstellar interloper 2I/Borisov was discovered three months before it passed by the Sun, allowing astronomers to capture images of the object for about a year. Borisov’s path brought it within 180 million miles of Earth . The relative locations of Borisov and Earth are shown for three points in time.
“We’ll have to wait and see, but they could be analogs of ‘Oumuamua,” says planetary scientist Darryl Seligman of Cornell University, coauthor with Jewitt of the review of interstellar interlopers.More data, from more interlopers, may help resolve some of these questions. In order to gather these data, scientists will need better odds of detecting the objects when they pass through the solar system.
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