Scientists reached the conclusion after observing 2I/Borisov with two of the most powerful telescopes on Earth. They decided that it looked like any other comet except that it came from beyond the solar system and would soon leave for good.
The unusual body was spotted in August by a Crimean amateur astronomer, Gennady Borisov. It was swiftly identified as an outcast from another star system and may have been wandering the Milky Way for millions if not billions of years.
"This is the first comet known to science that arrived from outside the solar system, and it is completely similar to those we see inside the solar system," said Michal Drahus, an astronomer at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland.
The team, led by Piotr Guzik, gathered images of the comet after receiving an alert from a computer system that detects cosmic interlopers! Interstellar Comet Brings a Message...interstellar - ...message.html As you probably know, comets and asteroids orbit around the sun just like planets do. There is a whole asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that contains millions of asteroids. ...Interstellar Comet : Here's Why It's Got Scientists So Pumped Up ...that is just one interpretation among many. Ryan. Delete. Replies. Reply. Brad September 30 ...!! Unlike comets and asteroids that formed in the solar system, the arrivals are on trajectories that do not swing around the sun.
Not to change the topic here:
Saturn is the solar system's 'moon king,' with 20 more spotted - Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saturn is now being recognized as the “moon king” of our solar system, with astronomers spotting 20 more of them orbiting the giant ringed planet, bringing its total count to 82 - three more than Jupiter.
The newly identified small moons, ranging from about 2 to 4 miles (3 to 6 km) in diameter, were detected using the Subaru telescope in Hawaii by a research team led by astronomer Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington.
The discovery was announced this week by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center.
One of the moons orbits at an astounding distance of about 15 million miles (24 million km) from Saturn, farther away than any of its other moons! Interstellar Comet Borisov Looks Pretty Normal, New ...www.space.com / interstellar - comet ...Observations of the interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov have been flooding in for six weeks, and the more astronomers duplicate one another's work, the more confident they are in their analysis of the ...!! By comparison, Earth’s moon orbits about 240,000 miles (386,000 km) from the planet.
What Makes a Planet and How Many Are There in Our Solar System?
What makes a space object a planet? How many are there actually in our solar system? Let's find out.
How many planets are there in our solar system? 9? 8? 12? More? The answer might actually surprise you.
Here we explore the answer to this apparently simple question and take a quick tour of the main primary planets of our home solar system.
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What is a planet? An enormous chunk of stuff (rock or gas), roughly spheroidal in shape that orbits a star and may or may not have a moon, right?
While this is in part true, there are some issues with such a simple definition. What about asteroids? When does an object become large enough to be considered a planet?
Why are Venus and Mercury planets (according to current classifications) but not Pluto? As it turns out, the reasons are pretty straight forward.
Voyager Mission Reveals Unexpected Pressure at The Edge of The Solar System
NASA astronomers have used data from the Voyager probes to measure the bustle of particles rippling at the very edge of our Solar System, and discovered the pressure in the distant borderlands of our star is higher than they expected.
The results suggest "that there are some other parts to the pressure that aren't being considered right now that could contribute," says Princeton University astrophysicist Jamie Rankin .
Maybe there are entire populations of particles out there that haven't been taken into account yet. Or maybe it's just a little hotter than anybody figured! Newly discovered comet is likely interstellar visitor phys.org ...newly- comet - interstellar -visitor.html The official confirmation that comet C/2019 Q4 is an interstellar comet has not yet been made, but if it is interstellar , it would be only the second such object detected. ..." One object becomes ...!! The researchers have a number of possible explanations to explore in future research.
While the discovery itself is interesting enough, it's the way they found it that makes for a truly fascinating bit of science.
As plasma in the shape of solar wind emanates from our Sun, it forms a 'bubble' we call the heliosphere. Fourteen billion kilometres away from the star, that wind effectively runs out of steam, as charged particles rapidly slow to subsonic speeds.
Were you following this:
Oddball solar system throws planet formation theories into question | Science | AAAS
A solar system 31 light-years away is challenging astronomers' theories about how some types of planets form.
One leading notion about how the gas giants in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn Uranus, and Neptune—developed is that agglomerations of dust and small pebbles eventually grew large enough to gravitationally attract large amounts of even light gases such as hydrogen and helium! Meet the second confirmed interstellar object to enter our ...www.pbs.org ...interstellar - comet An early image of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, taken by the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Gemini North Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawai'i. Image Credit: Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA ...!! But that sort of planetary evolution doesn't seem to work for all solar systems.
Take the star dubbed GJ 3512 and its retinue of planets: The parent star is a red dwarf about one-eighth the mass of our own sun orbited by two gas giants (depicted in an image from a video simulation above). The larger planet, whose presence has been confirmed, is almost half the mass of Jupiter and orbits the star once every 214 days , researchers report today in Science . Its suspected companion, which orbits farther out and apparently circles the star every 3.8 years or so, may weigh at least half as much as Saturn.
A Second Interstellar Visitor Has Arrived in Our Solar System.
For the second time ever, astronomers have detected an interstellar object plunging through our solar system! The 2nd known interstellar visitor makes 'Oumuamua seem ...www.sciencenews.org /article/borisov- interstellar ...How the second known interstellar visitor makes 'Oumuamua seem even odder New observations show that 2I/Borisov looks like a comet , just what astronomers expected!! But this time, researchers think they know where it came from.
When you rewind Comet Borisov's path through space, you'll find that 1 million years ago, the object passed just 5.7 light-years from the center of Kruger 60, moving just 2.13 miles per second (3.43 kilometers per second), the researchers wrote.
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"If you have an interstellar comet and you want to know where it came from, then you want to check two things," he said. "First, has this comet had a small pass distance from a planetary system? Because if it's coming from there, then its trajectory must intersect with the location of that system."
Though the 5.7 light-years between the new comet and Kruger may seem bigger than a "small gap" — nearly 357,000 times Earth's distance from the sun — it's close enough to count as "small" for these sorts of calculations, he said.
Early looks at the newfound object are offering astronomers exciting glimpses at rare material from another star sy… https://t.co/KZfO3FiA6G NatGeo (from Global) Sun Oct 13 23:24:03 +0000 2019
Comet #2IBorisov, recently confirmed as hailing from interstellar space, could have its origin in a star system 13… https://t.co/2BzGTvEs6e SETIInstitute (from Mountain View, CA) Sat Oct 12 23:16:01 +0000 2019
Astronomers are scrambling to study an alien visitor from the depths of intergalactic space: the newly discovered c… https://t.co/PQ9RzdhD0i thewire_in Mon Oct 14 05:33:24 +0000 2019
Initial characterization of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov. Thus far, remarkably, it very much looks like a Solar Sy… https://t.co/GtCfpUrNZy NatureAstronomy (from London, England) Mon Oct 14 15:20:07 +0000 2019
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