The space science community is all abuzz about our first visitor from another star! The cigar-shaped asteroid with a reddish hue is about 400m (1/4 mile) wide and ten times as long. This elongated shape is unlike anything in our solar system.
Named Oumuamua (oh-MOO-uh-Moo-uh, which is Hawai'ian for 'a messenger from afar arriving first'), the asteroid is dim, but it has a huge variation in brightness, about a factor of 10. The elongated objects in our solar system are at most three times as long as they are wide, and have a brightness variation of about 3.
Oumuamua was discovered October 19 by the University of Hawai'i's Pan-STARRS1 telescope, funded by NASA's Near-Earth Objective Observations (NEOO) program, which tracks comets and asteroids that might pose a threat to Earth.
Initial calculations indicate Oumuamua came from Vega, the bright star in the northern constellation of Lyra. But Vega was nowhere near its position now back when Oumuamua began its journey 300,000 years ago. It is traveling about 59,000 miles/hour. It slingshotted past the Sun on September 9 at 196,000 miles/hour!
After leaving our solar system, Oumuamua will head to the Pegasus constellation.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/solar-system-s-first-interstellar-visitor-dazzles-scientists
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