[SpookyZalost]

a few days ago nasa discovered asteroid A/2017 U1, according to the data collected so far it's trajectory, velocity, and other factors put it's origin firmly outside our own star system, it is currently on it's way out.

Below is an animated gif depicting the flyby.





at first nasa thought it was a comet given the extreme apoapsis of the object but closer inspection revealed no coma or any outgasing proving this to be a cold dry rock which was likely thrown out of another star system at some point and our sun just happened to come along it's millennia long path through the galaxy.

this is the first time in recorded history that an extrasolar object has been observed traversing our star system making this a major event.


so what do you guys think?

[Guardian]

The trajectories of these things are crazy. Space is... intense when you think about it.

[SpookyZalost]

oh yeah lol it's like this intense beautiful thing that we struggle to understand, however every time we gleam some new information about it our minds are blown and the world grows just a tiny bit because of it.

by the way they still haven't found whatever the hell has caused the orbits of a ton of trans Kuiper Belt objects to be all lined up like we've seen, but they think they have a bead on where it should be and narrowed it down to a single constellation as far as what direction to look into



of all of those orbits only planet nine is unknown but they think that's where it orbit should be based on it's effect on everything else... if it even exists, they've mostly just got a lot of footprints but no other evidence

[Guardian]

Awesome to put it into a graphic like that. Makes it even more... awesome.

[SpookyZalost]

Awesome to put it into a graphic like that. Makes it even more... awesome.

right now our back yard is the final frontier, and while we know a lot about how things work I'm starting to think that saying about knowing less about the oceans is only partially true.

I mean we know absolutely nothing about the other 5 ocean worlds in our own star system other than they have water.

we've only scratched the surface on asteroids (no pun intended).

and past the kuiper belt we literally know almost nothing about the space between there and the ort cloud.

we know more about nearby stars than we do about that region of space, which includes the heliopause, a lot of asteroids and comets, and possibly at least one more full planet.

[Guardian]

Yeah, definitely sounds like we need to make space travel profitable so we can get this show on the road.

[SpookyZalost]

you think I should make a general space thread? lol

[Guardian]

I wouldn't mind. I love space stuff.