Interstellar Objects

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Interstellar Objects The solar system science community and the general public were very excited with the recent discovery of an entirely new class of small bodies: interstellar asteroids. Inter- stellar asteroids (or comets) are not bound to the Sun and are debris from some other planetary system that was ejected into its own galactic orbit in interstellar space. Several papers over the last few decades have hypothesized var- LSST is likely to find several more ious properties of this population which provides unique constraints on planet formation. With interstellar objects, which should go the discovery of 1I/’Oumuamua (e.g., Meech et a long way toward answering many al. 2017), we have our first peak into this unique population, but the dozens of papers that fol- of the exciting questions about the lowed created many more questions about these properties of this unique population objects than answers. and its implication for understanding Such objects are incredibly sparse because of the vast distances between stars, even though the general planet formation process. typical stars may eject trillions of such objects. Such sparseness implies that these objects will be rare and faint (similar to small Near Earth Objects) and an efficient way to search for them is through a wide and fast survey like LSST. In fact, early estimates were cautious about whether LSST would even discover a single interstellar object (e.g., Above: Artist’s interpretation of Cook et al. 2016, Engelhardt et al. 2017, and Trilling et al. 2017), though the ability of ‘Oumuamua as it approaches our a shorter shallower survey to find the first such object creates significant optimism Solar System. Exact shape and about LSST’s potential. surface features are extrapola- tions from research and based on bodies in our Solar System, LSST is likely to find several more interstellar objects, which should go a long way except the extreme elongated shape is unique to this object. toward answering many of the exciting questions about the properties of this unique Credit: Gemini Observatory/ population and its implication for understanding the general planet formation process. AURA/NSF See more at www.lsstsssc.org .

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KAREN J. MEECH February 7, 2019 Astronomer
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH – KAREN J. MEECH February 7, 2019 Astronomer Institute for Astronomy Tel: 1-808-956-6828 2680 Woodlawn Drive Fax: 1-808-956-4532 Honolulu, HI 96822-1839 [email protected] PROFESSIONAL PREPARATION Rice University Space Physics B.A. 1981 Massachusetts Institute of Tech. Planetary Astronomy Ph.D. 1987 APPOINTMENTS 2018 – present Graduate Chair 2000 – present Astronomer, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii 1992-2000 Associate Astronomer, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii 1987-1992 Assistant Astronomer, Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii 1982-1987 Graduate Research & Teaching Assistant, Massachusetts Inst. Tech. 1981-1982 Research Specialist, AAVSO and Massachusetts Institute of Technology AWARDS 2018 ARCs Scientist of the Year 2015 University of Hawai’i Regent’s Medal for Research Excellence 2013 Director’s Research Excellence Award 2011 NASA Group Achievement Award for the EPOXI Project Team 2011 NASA Group Achievement Award for EPOXI & Stardust-NExT Missions 2009 William Tylor Olcott Distinguished Service Award of the American Association of Variable Star Observers 2006-8 National Academy of Science/Kavli Foundation Fellow 2005 NASA Group Achievement Award for the Stardust Flight Team 1996 Asteroid 4367 named Meech 1994 American Astronomical Society / DPS Harold C. Urey Prize 1988 Annie Jump Cannon Award 1981 Heaps Physics Prize RESEARCH FIELD AND ACTIVITIES • Developed a Discovery mission concept to explore the origin of Earth’s water. • Co-Investigator on the Deep Impact, Stardust-NeXT and EPOXI missions, leading the Earth-based observing campaigns for all three. • Leads the UH Astrobiology Research interdisciplinary program, overseeing ~30 postdocs and coordinating the research with ~20 local faculty and international partners.
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Early Observations of the Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
geosciences Article Early Observations of the Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov Chien-Hsiu Lee NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, Tucson, AZ 85719, USA; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-520-318-8368 Received: 26 November 2019; Accepted: 11 December 2019; Published: 17 December 2019 Abstract: 2I/Borisov is the second ever interstellar object (ISO). It is very different from the first ISO ’Oumuamua by showing cometary activities, and hence provides a unique opportunity to study comets that are formed around other stars. Here we present early imaging and spectroscopic follow-ups to study its properties, which reveal an (up to) 5.9 km comet with an extended coma and a short tail. Our spectroscopic data do not reveal any emission lines between 4000–9000 Angstrom; nevertheless, we are able to put an upper limit on the flux of the C2 emission line, suggesting modest cometary activities at early epochs. These properties are similar to comets in the solar system, and suggest that 2I/Borisov—while from another star—is not too different from its solar siblings. Keywords: comets: general; comets: individual (2I/Borisov); solar system: formation 1. Introduction 2I/Borisov was first seen by Gennady Borisov on 30 August 2019. As more observations were conducted in the next few days, there was growing evidence that this might be an interstellar object (ISO), especially its large orbital eccentricity. However, the first astrometric measurements do not have enough timespan and are not of same quality, hence the high eccentricity is yet to be confirmed. This had all changed by 11 September; where more than 100 astrometric measurements over 12 days, Ref [1] pinned down the orbit elements of 2I/Borisov, with an eccentricity of 3.15 ± 0.13, hence confirming the interstellar nature.
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Initial Characterization of Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
Initial characterization of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov Piotr Guzik1*, Michał Drahus1*, Krzysztof Rusek2, Wacław Waniak1, Giacomo Cannizzaro3,4, Inés Pastor-Marazuela5,6 1 Astronomical Observatory, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland 2 AGH University of Science and Technology, Kraków, Poland 3 SRON, Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Utrecht, the Netherlands 4 Department of Astrophysics/IMAPP, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands 5 Anton Pannekoek Institute for Astronomy, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 6 ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, Dwingeloo, the Netherlands * These authors contributed equally to this work; email: [email protected], [email protected] Interstellar comets penetrating through the Solar System had been anticipated for decades1,2. The discovery of asteroidal-looking ‘Oumuamua3,4 was thus a huge surprise and a puzzle. Furthermore, the physical properties of the ‘first scout’ turned out to be impossible to reconcile with Solar System objects4–6, challenging our view of interstellar minor bodies7,8. Here, we report the identification and early characterization of a new interstellar object, which has an evidently cometary appearance. The body was discovered by Gennady Borisov on 30 August 2019 UT and subsequently identified as hyperbolic by our data mining code in publicly available astrometric data. The initial orbital solution implies a very high hyperbolic excess speed of ~32 km s−1, consistent with ‘Oumuamua9 and theoretical predictions2,7. Images taken on 10 and 13 September 2019 UT with the William Herschel Telescope and Gemini North Telescope show an extended coma and a faint, broad tail. We measure a slightly reddish colour with a g′–r′ colour index of 0.66 ± 0.01 mag, compatible with Solar System comets.
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Comet Interceptor: a Mission to an Ancient World
EPSC Abstracts Vol. 14, EPSC2020-574, 2020 https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-574 Europlanet Science Congress 2020 © Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Comet Interceptor: A mission to an ancient world Cecilia Tubiana1, Geraint Jones2,3, Colin Snodgrass4, and the the Comet Interceptor Team* 1Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Goettingen, Germany ([email protected]) 2Mullard Space Science Laboratory, University College London, Surrey, UK 3The Centre for Planetary Sciences at UCL/Birkbeck, London, UK 4Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract Comets are the most pristine objects in our Solar System. Having spent most of their life at large distance from the Sun, where they remained mostly unaffected by solar radiation, comets are the most unaltered remnants from the era of planet formation. In June 2019, a multi-spacecraft project – Comet Interceptor – was selected by the European Space Agency (ESA) as its next planetary mission, and the first in its new class of Fast (F) projects [1]. The mission’s primary science goal is to characterise, for the first time, a long-period comet – preferably one which is dynamically new – or an interstellar object. An encounter with a comet approaching the Sun for the first time will provide valuable data to complement that from all previous comet missions: the surface of such an object would be being heated to temperatures above the its constituent ices’ sublimation point for the first time since its formation.
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Spherex: New NASA MIDEX All-Sky 1-5 Um Spectral Survey
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Research Paper in Nature
Draft version November 1, 2017 Typeset using LATEX twocolumn style in AASTeX61 DISCOVERY AND CHARACTERIZATION OF THE FIRST KNOWN INTERSTELLAR OBJECT Karen J. Meech,1 Robert Weryk,1 Marco Micheli,2, 3 Jan T. Kleyna,1 Olivier Hainaut,4 Robert Jedicke,1 Richard J. Wainscoat,1 Kenneth C. Chambers,1 Jacqueline V. Keane,1 Andreea Petric,1 Larry Denneau,1 Eugene Magnier,1 Mark E. Huber,1 Heather Flewelling,1 Chris Waters,1 Eva Schunova-Lilly,1 and Serge Chastel1 1Institute for Astronomy, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 2ESA SSA-NEO Coordination Centre, Largo Galileo Galilei, 1, 00044 Frascati (RM), Italy 3INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via Frascati, 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone (RM), Italy 4European Southern Observatory, Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2, D-85748 Garching bei München,Germany (Received November 1, 2017; Revised TBD, 2017; Accepted TBD, 2017) Submitted to Nature ABSTRACT Nature Letters have no abstracts. Keywords: asteroids: individual (A/2017 U1) | comets: interstellar Corresponding author: Karen J. Meech [email protected] 2 Meech et al. 1. SUMMARY 22 confirmed that this object is unique, with the highest 29 Until very recently, all ∼750 000 known aster- known hyperbolic eccentricity of 1:188 ± 0:016 . Data oids and comets originated in our own solar sys- obtained by our team and other researchers between Oc- tem. These small bodies are made of primor- tober 14{29 refined its orbital eccentricity to a level of dial material, and knowledge of their composi- precision that confirms the hyperbolic nature at ∼ 300σ. tion, size distribution, and orbital dynamics is Designated as A/2017 U1, this object is clearly from essential for understanding the origin and evo- outside our solar system (Figure2).
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Spectroscopy and Thermal Modelling of the First Interstellar Object 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Queen's University Research Portal Spectroscopy and thermal modelling of the first interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua Fitzsimmons, A., Snodgrass, C., Rozitis, B., Yang, B., Hyland, M., Seccull, T., ... Lacerda, P. (2018). Spectroscopy and thermal modelling of the first interstellar object 1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua. DOI: 10.1038/s41550-017-0361-4 Published in: Nature Astronomy Document Version: Peer reviewed version Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights © 2017 Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature. All rights reserved.This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:09. Sep. 2018 Spectroscopy and thermal modelling of the ﬁrst interstel- lar object 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua Alan Fitzsimmons1, Colin Snodgrass2, Ben Rozitis2, Bin Yang3, Meabh´ Hyland1, Tom Seccull1, Michele T.
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Interstellar Interlopers Two Recently Sighted Space Rocks That Came from Beyond the Solar System Have Puzzled Astronomers
A S T R O N O MY InterstellarInterstellar Interlopers Two recently sighted space rocks that came from beyond the solar system have puzzled astronomers 42 Scientiﬁc American, October 2020 © 2020 Scientific American 1I/‘OUMUAMUA, the frst interstellar object ever observed in the solar system, passed close to Earth in 2017. InterstellarInterlopers Interlopers Two recently sighted space rocks that came from beyond the solar system have puzzled astronomers By David Jewitt and Amaya Moro-Martín Illustrations by Ron Miller October 2020, ScientiﬁcAmerican.com 43 © 2020 Scientific American David Jewitt is an astronomer at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he studies the primitive bodies of the solar system and beyond. Amaya Moro-Martín is an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. She investigates planetary systems and extrasolar comets. ATE IN THE EVENING OF OCTOBER 24, 2017, AN E-MAIL ARRIVED CONTAINING tantalizing news of the heavens. Astronomer Davide Farnocchia of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was writing to one of us (Jewitt) about a new object in the sky with a very strange trajectory. Discovered six days earli- er by University of Hawaii astronomer Robert Weryk, the object, initially dubbed P10Ee5V, was traveling so fast that the sun could not keep it in orbit. Instead of its predicted path being a closed ellipse, its orbit was open, indicating that it would never return. “We still need more data,” Farnocchia wrote, “but the orbit appears to be hyperbolic.” Within a few hours, Jewitt wrote to Jane Luu, a long-time collaborator with Norwegian connections, about observing the new object with the Nordic Optical Telescope in LSpain.
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Week 5: January 26-February 1, 2020
5# Ice & Stone 2020 Week 5: January 26-February 1, 2020 Presented by The Earthrise Institute About Ice And Stone 2020 It is my pleasure to welcome all educators, students, topics include: main-belt asteroids, near-Earth asteroids, and anybody else who might be interested, to Ice and “Great Comets,” spacecraft visits (both past and Stone 2020. This is an educational package I have put future), meteorites, and “small bodies” in popular together to cover the so-called “small bodies” of the literature and music. solar system, which in general means asteroids and comets, although this also includes the small moons of Throughout 2020 there will be various comets that are the various planets as well as meteors, meteorites, and visible in our skies and various asteroids passing by Earth interplanetary dust. Although these objects may be -- some of which are already known, some of which “small” compared to the planets of our solar system, will be discovered “in the act” -- and there will also be they are nevertheless of high interest and importance various asteroids of the main asteroid belt that are visible for several reasons, including: as well as “occultations” of stars by various asteroids visible from certain locations on Earth’s surface. Ice a) they are believed to be the “leftovers” from the and Stone 2020 will make note of these occasions and formation of the solar system, so studying them provides appearances as they take place. The “Comet Resource valuable insights into our origins, including Earth and of Center” at the Earthrise web site contains information life on Earth, including ourselves; about the brighter comets that are visible in the sky at any given time and, for those who are interested, I will b) we have learned that this process isn’t over yet, and also occasionally share information about the goings-on that there are still objects out there that can impact in my life as I observe these comets.
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The Orbit and Size-Frequency Distribution of Long Period Comets Observed by Pan-STARRS1
The Orbit and Size-Frequency Distribution of Long Period Comets Observed by Pan-STARRS1 Benjamin Boea, Robert Jedickea, Karen J. Meecha, Paul Wiegertb, Robert J. Weryka, K. C. Chambersa, L. Denneaua, N. Kaiserd, R.-P. Kudritzkia,c, E. A. Magniera, R. J. Wainscoata, C. Watersa aInstitute for Astronomy, University of Hawaiì, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA bThe University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada cMunich University Observatory, Munich, Germany dEcole´ Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. Abstract We introduce a new technique to estimate the comet nuclear size frequency distribution (SFD) that combines a cometary activity model with a survey simulation and apply it to 150 long period comets (LPC) detected by the Pan-STARRS1 near-Earth object survey. The debiased LPC size-frequency distribution is in agreement with previous estimates for large comets with nuclear diameter & 1 km but we measure a significant drop in the SFD slope for small objects with diameters < 1 km and approaching only 100 m diameter. Large objects have a slope αbig = 0:72 ± 0:09(stat:) ± 0:15(sys:) while small objects behave as αsmall = αHN 0:07 ± 0:03(stat:) ± 0:09(sys:) where the SFD is / 10 and HN represents the cometary nuclear absolute magnitude. The total number of LPCs that are > 1 km diameter and have perihelia q < 10 au is 0:46 ± 0:15 × 109 while there are only 2:4 ± 0:5(stat:) ± 2(sys:) × 109 objects with diameters > 100 m due to the shallow slope of the SFD for diameters < 1 km. We estimate that the total number of `potentially active' objects with diameters ≥ 1 km in the Oort cloud, objects that would be defined as LPCs if their perihelia evolved to < 10 au, is 12 (1:5±1)×10 with a combined mass of 1:3±0:9 M⊕.
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A Search for the Origin of the Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov
A&A 634, A14 (2020) Astronomy https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201937231 & © C. A. L. Bailer-Jones et al. 2020 Astrophysics A search for the origin of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov Coryn A. L. Bailer-Jones1, Davide Farnocchia2, Quanzhi Ye ( )3, Karen J. Meech4, and Marco Micheli5,6 1 Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Königstuhl 17, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany e-mail: [email protected] 2 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA 3 Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA 4 Institute for Astronomy, 2680 Woodlawn Drive, Honolulu, HI 96822, USA 5 ESA NEO Coordination Centre, Largo Galileo Galilei 1, 00044 Frascati (RM), Italy 6 INAF – Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma, Via Frascati 33, 00040 Monte Porzio Catone (RM), Italy Received 2 December 2019 / Accepted 30 December 2019 ABSTRACT The discovery of the second interstellar object 2I/Borisov on 2019 August 30 raises the question of whether it was ejected recently from a nearby stellar system. Here we compute the asymptotic incoming trajectory of 2I/Borisov, based on both recent and pre-discovery data extending back to December 2018, using a range of force models that account for cometary outgassing. From Gaia DR2 astrometry and radial velocities, we trace back in time the Galactic orbits of 7.4 million stars to look for close encounters with 2I/Borisov. The closest encounter we ﬁnd took place 910 kyr ago with the M0V star Ross 573, at a separation of 0.068 pc (90% conﬁdence interval 1 of 0.053–0.091 pc) with a relative velocity of 23 km s− .
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