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The natural history of ‘Oumuamua

Nature Astronomy volume 3, pages 594–602 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

The discovery of the first interstellar object passing through the Solar System, 1I/2017 U1 (‘Oumuamua), provoked intense and continuing interest from the scientific community and the general public. The faintness of ‘Oumuamua, together with the limited time window within which observations were possible, constrained the information available on its dynamics and physical state. Here we review our knowledge and find that in all cases, the observations are consistent with a purely natural origin for ‘Oumuamua. We discuss how the observed characteristics of ‘Oumuamua are explained by our extensive knowledge of natural minor bodies in our Solar System and our current knowledge of the evolution of planetary systems. We highlight several areas requiring further investigation.

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Fig. 1: Montage of images of ‘Oumuamua showing its point-like unresolved appearance with no hint of detectable activity.
Fig. 2: Montage of potential formation scenarios of ‘Oumuamua as a natural planetesimal.
Fig. 3: Inferred interstellar object number density — for a fixed estimate of the mass density of 0.004–3 Earth masses per cubic parsec — assuming different underlying SFDs.
Fig. 4: Predicted distribution of orbital elements of natural interstellar objects detected by the primary contemporary asteroid surveys.

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The authors declare that the main data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article. Extra data are available from the corresponding author upon request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the International Space Science Institute (ISSI Bern), which made this collaboration possible. A.F., M.T.B. and C.S. acknowledge support from UK Science and Technology Facilities Council grants ST/P0003094/1 and ST/L004569/1. K.J.M. acknowledges support through NSF awards AST1617015, in addition to support for HST programmes GO/DD-15405 and -15447 provided by NASA through a grant from the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy under NASA contract NAS 5-26555. Q.Y. is supported by the GROWTH project funded by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1545949. This research was partially supported by the project 2015/17/B/ST9/01790 funded by the National Science Centre in Poland. M.M.K. acknowledges support from NASA Near Earth Object Observations grant no. NNX17AK15G. A.G.-L. acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under grant agreement no. 802699. A.M. and D.E.T. are supported in part by Spitzer/NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech. S.N.R. acknowledges helpful discussions with P. Armitage related to the interstellar object number/mass density, and the Virtual Planetary Laboratory research team, funded by the NASA Astrobiology Program under NASA Grant Number 80NSSC18K0829. This work benefited from participation in the NASA Nexus for Exoplanet Systems Science research coordination network.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Astrophysics Research Centre, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast, UK

    Michele T. Bannister & Alan Fitzsimmons

  2. Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany

    Asmita Bhandare

  3. Astronomical Observatory Institute, Faculty of Physics, A. Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

    Piotr A. Dybczyński

  4. Institut UTINAM, UMR 6213/CNRS, Université de Bourgogne-Franche Comté, Besancon, France

    Aurélie Guilbert-Lepoutre

  5. Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon, LGL-TPE, UMR 5276 CNRS, Université de Lyon/Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, ENS Lyon, Villeurbanne, France

    Aurélie Guilbert-Lepoutre

  6. Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Robert Jedicke & Karen J. Meech

  7. Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Matthew M. Knight

  8. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ, USA

    Andrew McNeill & David E. Trilling

  9. Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie, Bonn, Germany

    Susanne Pfalzner

  10. Jülich Supercomputing Center, Jülich, Germany

    Susanne Pfalzner

  11. Department of Physics, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Susanne Pfalzner

  12. Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Bordeaux, CNRS, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac, France

    Sean N. Raymond

  13. Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, UK

    Colin Snodgrass

  14. Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Quanzhi Ye

  15. Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    Quanzhi Ye

Consortia

The ‘Oumuamua ISSI Team

  • Michele T. Bannister
  • , Asmita Bhandare
  • , Piotr A. Dybczyński
  • , Alan Fitzsimmons
  • , Aurélie Guilbert-Lepoutre
  • , Robert Jedicke
  • , Matthew M. Knight
  • , Karen J. Meech
  • , Andrew McNeill
  • , Susanne Pfalzner
  • , Sean N. Raymond
  • , Colin Snodgrass
  • , David E. Trilling
  •  & Quanzhi Ye

Contributions

M.M.K. and A.F. organized the ISSI team. K.J.M. created Figs. 1 and 2. S.N.R. conducted the modelling of inferred interstellar object number density and created Fig. 3. M.M.K., A.F. and R.J. created Fig. 4 from source data provided by T. Engelhardt. All authors discussed the topics in the paper, contributed to the writing and commented on the manuscript at all stages.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew M. Knight.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information: Nature Astronomy thanks Olivier Hainaut and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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The ‘Oumuamua ISSI Team. The natural history of ‘Oumuamua. Nat Astron 3, 594–602 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-019-0816-x

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