Richard Bizley/Science Photo Library
The solar system may be hosting a visitor from the stars. A newly discovered comet is screaming away from Earth, and based on its weird orbital trajectory astronomers think it might be the first comet ever observed that came from interstellar space.
A sky-surveying telescope in Hawaii spotted the fast-moving object, now called C/2017 U1, on 18 October, after its closest approach to the sun. During the next week, astronomers made 34 separate observations of the object and found it has a strange trajectory that is at an angle to the orbits of the planets and does not circle the sun.
Now, astronomers are hoping more skywatchers will take a look and pin down whether it’s from our neighborhood or an interloper from beyond.
Advertisement
Most comets follow ellipse-shaped orbits around the sun, swooping in from the distant Oort Cloud to kiss the inner solar system before heading back out again. This one, by contrast, will never return. Its orbital path suggests it sailed in from the direction of the constellation Lyra above the relatively flat plane of the solar system, looped around the sun, and is headed back out for eternity.
Lyra is near the direction the sun is moving within the Milky Way, says Luke Dones at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “That’s exactly what you’d expect; there should be more interstellar comets coming from the direction the sun is heading toward,” he says.
Just popping in
“It’s coming from very far away, but we can’t actually backtrack how far away it started. It could be that it’s coming from outside the solar system, but it’s really hard to tell,” says Simon Porter, also at the Southwest Research Institute. Further observations in the next couple weeks will make the picture clearer.
What’s more, a comet on such an extreme path doesn’t necessarily have to come from interstellar space. “It could have interacted with Jupiter or another planet in such a way that changed its orbit,” says Maria Womack at the University of South Florida in Tampa.
The comet’s origins are hard to pin down in part because of the nature of comets. “When you think of photos of comets, they’re a fuzzy blob. People have to make determinations of where they think the center is. Someone who is at the telescope has to make a call,” Womack says.
This necessary guesswork makes the measurements less precise, so astronomers want lots of observations before they’ll be convinced the comet really is from beyond our solar system, she adds.
Luckily, there are plenty of opportunities left to take a peek. The comet should be visible in powerful telescopes for at least another couple weeks, allowing amateurs and professionals alike to survey the icy visitor and determine its history.
More on these topics: