The farewell of the star traveler
The farewell of the star traveler
Oumuamua ceases to be visible in the infrared, revealing the last details about its nature.
The traveler disappeared in the night. After following his trajectory for several months and now as far from the Sun as Saturn, the interstellar messenger disappeared from the terrestrial telescopes, already too tenuous to be able to continue being detected. Among them the Spitzer, who monitored their footprint in the infrared until recently it vanished in the dark. A sad news for astronomers, who have followed him since his nature was discovered as a visitor of the stars, but who at the same time offers as a farewell gift new details about its nature, both with regard to size and reflectivity of its surface, which in turn can give clues about how it could be and the possible activity that took place during its journey close to the Sun.
What Spitzer I can not see it anymore, for example, it must be smaller than previously thought, with a major axis that perhaps does not reach 400 meters, although obviously there is a wide margin of error. But this new size limit is consistent with the findings of a previous work, which suggested that degassing was responsible for slight changes in the speed and direction of Oumuamua how they were tracked last year: The authors concluded that the expelled gas acted as a small impeller, pushing it gently. This conclusion depended on that it was relatively smaller than the typical comets of the Solar System, and that is what what happened now suggests.
"Oumuamua has been full of surprises since the first day, so we were anxious to see what Spitzer could show"Said David Trilling, lead author of the new study and professor of astronomy at the University of Northern Arizona. "The fact that it was too small to be detected by Spitzer is actually a very valuable result"
The new study also suggests that it may have a reflectivity 10 times higher than comets that reside in our Solar System, a surprising result, according to the authors of the article. Infrared light can be used to determine the temperature of a comet or asteroid, and in turn, this reveals the reflectivity of the surface of the object, what scientists call albedo. Like a dark shirt in the light of Sun it heats up more quickly than a clear object, an object with low reflectivity retains more heat than an object with high. So a lower temperature means a higher albedo.
Oumuamua I had been traveling through interstellar space for millions of years, away from any star that could cause a renewal of its surface, but the activity that was generated when it passed near the Sun it made him wake up and perhaps sweep away dust and "dirt," while part of the released gas could have covered the surface with a reflective layer of ice and snow.
Curious results, certainly intriguing that will give much to talk about, and that in any other case would have caused new observation campaigns to gather more data, compare with the previous ones, and together try to advance in our understanding of the object. But this will not be the case, since surely we will not know more than we know now. Oumuamua He's gone forever. Surely we will discover new ones, but the one that opened the door of the stars is already a memory lost in the darkness.
Until forever, star traveler.
Our Solar System's First Known Interstellar Object Gets Unexpected Speed Boost
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