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On October 19, 2017, astronomers detected for the first time a body from outside the Solar System that would have been a comet but it was later thought that the he was an asteroid or the first of a new class of interstellar objects . Finally, we returned to the first hypothesis: it's a comet.
This is the 'Oumuamua a cigar-shaped body that was detected by the Haleakala Observatory of Hawaii and which is now a group of scientists . The European Space Agency (ESA) states that is an interstellar comet according to a study published in the journal Nature .
Extraordinary long, about 800 meters long and dark red, Oumuauma is of unknown origin and although its surface resembles the nucleus of a comet she does not seem to have the & # 39; coma's atmosphere and the dust that forms when comets melt and release gases passing near a star.
However, Marco Micheli's team at the NEO Coordination Center ESA in Frascati (Italy), determined that yes it is a comet .
The experts They studied the movement of Oumuamua in the solar system and pointed out that the arc along which the object travel can not to be explained solely by the gravitational pull of the Sun, the planets and the large asteroids .
Part of the acceleration, which makes him move away from the Sun, "must be of a non-gravitational nature," they say in their study
. behavior of comets that may be propelled by the gas released by them
From this study, the authors also exclude other possible explanations for non-gravitational motion, including radiation pressure
Because of all this, they believe that is "a comet small, rare" according to Micheli, who claims that by the data obtained, "their momentum It becomes more in smaller as it moves away from the Sun, which is typical of comets. "
In addition, Micheli's team sought to explain the interstellar visitor's velocity, what which is superior to what was believed
It is highly probable that Oumuamua releases materials from its surface because of solar heating, which generates a small but steady impulse who causes the comet leaves the Solar System p faster than expected – since June 1, 2018 it travels, approximately, to 114 thousand kilometers per hour –
A behavior detected by a collaboration of astronomers from around the world which includes the long-range telescope ( VLT) of ESO at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.
Astronomers 'calculations suggest that the object comes from the direction in which he find the bright star Vega, in the northern constellation of Lyra
It is likely that ' Oumuamua wandered in the Milky Way, regardless of any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before his luck. encounter with the solar system .
RL
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