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https://www.sciencealert.com/our-new-interstellar-visitor-is-now-official-and-it-has-a-name
The verdict is in: after a thorough round of observations, the comet suspected of being an interstellar alien has been ratified. According to the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the comet is "unambiguously" interstellar in origin, and it has now been given a name: 2I/Borisov.
Previously, the comet had been going by the provisional name C/2019 Q4 (Borisov). C means it's a comet with a hyperbolic orbit, followed by the year it was discovered, an alphanumeric code for when in the year it was discovered, and the comet name in parentheses - that's Crimean amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov, who spotted the comet with telescope he made himself.
The new name has been simplified. In 2I, I stands for "interstellar", and 2 for being the second interstellar object ever discovered, after 'Oumuamua, which was detected in October 2017.
Previously: Possible Second Interstellar Object Discovered
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @06:02PM (2 children)
The orbit is unambiguously hyperbolic. Comets from the Oort cloud have an eccentricity of nearly 1. These are nearly parabolic, as would be expected for objects that are almost, but not quite, coming from outside the Sun's sphere of influence. A few have eccentricities slightly over 1. Depending on what happens to them on the way back out, some of those will leave the Solar system.
Borisov isn't like that. It has an eccentricity of 3.5. It's not anywhere close to an Oort cloud object. Nor is there any form of gravitational perturbation that could have created such an orbit. It simply has far too much energy to have received it from gravity. Its "orbit" is actually not extremely different from the Voyager spacecraft, which took powerful rockets and multiple gravity assists from giant planets to reach their velocities.
It's just not from the Oort cloud. So the fact that it has chemistry that resembles local comets tells us that the comets of other stars aren't necessarily that different from ours. But hopefully they'll spot some interesting differences too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 26 2019, @06:21PM
Closest approach in December at around 1.9 AU.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Friday September 27 2019, @10:58AM
It has an eccentricity of 3.5 because that's how it's being ejected from the solar system.
Reread my post, this time for comprehension. Avoid the footnotes, they clearly confused you last time.
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