This mystery object may be our first visitor from another solar system

CNN ^ | Updated 5:41 PM ET, Fri October 27, 2017 | By Amanda Barnett

[Red Badger]

Astronomers around the world are trying to track down a small, fast-moving object that is zipping through our solar system. Is a comet? An asteroid? NASA's not sure. The space agency doesn't even know where it came from, but it's not behaving like the local space rocks and that means it may not be from our solar system. If that's confirmed, NASA says "it would be the first interstellar object to be observed and confirmed by astronomers."

NASA says astronomers are pointing telescopes on the ground and in space at the object to get that data. For now, the object is being called A/2017 U1. Experts think it's less than a quarter-mile (400 meters) in diameter and it's racing through space at 15.8 miles (25.5 kilometers) per second. It was discovered October 19 by the University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS 1 telescope on Haleakala, Hawaii. Rob Weryk, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy, was the first to identify the object and immediately realized there was something different about it. "Its motion could not be explained using either a normal solar system asteroid or comet orbit," he said. "This object came from outside our solar system." Whatever "it" is, the object isn't a threat to Earth.

[SunkenCiv]

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