A&A 610, L11 (2018) https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201732309 Astronomy & © ESO 2018 Astrophysics LETTER TO THE EDITOR Investigating the dynamical history of the interstellar object ’Oumuamua Piotr A. Dybczynski´ 1 and Małgorzata Królikowska2 1 Astronomical Observatory Institute, Faculty of Physics, A. Mickiewicz University, Słoneczna 36, Poznan,´ Poland e-mail:
[email protected] 2 Space Research Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18A, Warszawa, Poland e-mail:
[email protected] Received 16 November 2017 / Accepted 26 January 2018 ABSTRACT Here we try to find the origin of 1I/2017 U1 ’Oumuamua, the first interstellar object recorded inside the solar system. To this aim, we searched for close encounters between ’Oumuamua and all nearby stars with known kinematic data during their past motion. We had checked over 200 thousand stars and found just a handful of candidates. If we limit our investigation to within a 60 pc sphere surrounding the Sun, then the most probable candidate for the ’Oumuamua parent stellar habitat is the star UCAC4 535-065571. However GJ 876 is also a favourable candidate. However, the origin of ’Oumuamua from a much more distant source is still an open question. Additionally, we found that the quality of the original orbit of ’Oumuamua is accurate enough for such a study and that none of the checked stars had perturbed its motion significantly. All numerical results of this research are available in the appendix. Key words. methods: numerical – celestial mechanics – comets: general – interplanetary medium 1. Introduction on the determination of physical parameters for ’Oumuamua has also been presented recently by Jewitt et al.(2017).