Visitor from a Distant Place

Because it's worth remembering, especially during times of crisis, that it's a big universe out there, I thought it worthwhile to highlight the fascinating things scientists continue to learn about our 2017 interstellar visitor, Oumuamua. It really is wonderful to think of this object traveling from a faraway system into our own backyard! Won't it be something if one day we're able to intercept, in some way,  and more closely study an object like this? 

An artistic rendering based on scientific observations and judgments.

An astronomer using a telescope in Hawaii spotted the first known interstellar object in 2017. That was after astronomers had estimated that several such objects – natural objects not born in our solar system or bound to our sun – should pass inside Earth’s orbit each year. The IAU designated it as 1I/’Oumuamua, the 1I for first interstellar and ‘Oumuamua, which is Hawaiian for a messenger from afar arriving first. Astronomers on all parts of Earth had only a few months to study this object; when first spotted, it had already passed closest to our sun and was heading out of our solar system again. They found the object to be dry (not icy like a comet) and peculiarly elongated. How was it formed, and where did it come from? Now computer simulations appear to confirm what many had suggested: that ‘Oumuamua came to us after a close encounter with its parent star and that it might, indeed, be a fragment of a shattered alien world (continues).