First Interstellar Asteroid Is Long, Cigar-Shaped 🚀

<br /> <p>Scientific analysis has revealed that the first object to pass through our solar system from interstellar space is an asteroid with an unusually elongated shape.</p><p>The asteroid was first spotted on October 19 by researchers using the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii, and named “Oumuamua,” which means a “messenger from afar arriving first” in Hawaiian.</a></p><p>Analysis over the past month, published on Novermber 20 in the scientific journal Nature</a>, has revealed that Oumuamua has an irregular, cigar-like shape about 1,300 feet long, which is unlike other asteroids discovered in our solar system.</p><p>Astronomer Ralk Kotulla of the University of Wisconsin-Madison called it a “really rare object” speeding through the solar system at an unprecedented 40,000 miles per hour.</p><p>“This object has considerable speed. It is not bound to the sun [like asteroids in our solar system],” Kotulla said in a statement</a>. “Its orbit doesn’t take it anywhere near the major planets.”</p><p>“For decades we’ve theorized that such interstellar objects are out there, and now – for the first time – we have direct evidence they exist,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This history-making discovery is opening a new window to study formation of solar systems beyond our own.” Credit: NASA via Storyful</p><br />