A11pl3Z: Astronomers discover ‘interstellar visitor’ from outside the solar system
Scientists have discovered what might be only the third known interstellar object to pass through our solar system, the European Space Agency says.
The harmless object is currently near Jupiter, hundreds of millions of kilometres away and moving toward Mars, but it should get no closer to the sun than that, according to scientists.
It is too soon to know whether the object, designated for now as A11pl3Z, is a rocky asteroid or an icy comet or how big and what shape it is.
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NASA said it is monitoring the situation.
Astrophysicist Josep Trigo-Rodriguez of the Institute of Space Sciences near Barcelona, Spain, believes it is an interstellar object based on its odd path and extreme speed cutting through the solar system.
He estimates its size at about 40km across.
The first confirmed interstellar visitor was in 2017.
It was dubbed Oumuamua, Hawaiian for scout, in honour of the observatory in Hawaii that discovered it.
Classified at first as an asteroid, the elongated Oumuamua has since showed signs of being a comet.
The second object confirmed to have strayed from another star system into our own is 21/Borisov, discovered in 2019 and believed to be a comet.
