Oumuamua — Wherefore art Thee??
This ‘ROCK’ or better yet Oumuamua (pronounced oh MOO-uh MOO-uh), which is Hawaiian for “a messenger from afar arriving first.”, was initially observed in late October 2017, passing through the farthest outer regions of our Solar System by the University of Hawaii’s Pan-STARRS1 telescope, located at Haleakala, Hawaii; a major facility funded by NASA’s Near –Earth-Object-Observations (NEOO) Program.
This unique NASA program finds tracks, and documents asteroids and comets that assemble themselves and are active in a near-Earth location or orbit within our Solar System and somewhat beyond (exoplanet). Catching sight of this 800 meters long (0.5 miles) cigar-shaped space ROCK was truly a lucky-break. Scanning the vastness of any portion of outer-space can be at best; often hit-and-miss.
When Oumuamua, affectionately defined by NASA as ‘an orphaned vagabond’, was first observed, a huge cry of joy and anticipation arose throughout the NASA Observatory community. First, to jump into action, of course, after Hawaii, was the ESO (European Southern Observatory) which immediately redeployed and focused its Very Large Telescope, located in Cerro Paranal, Antofagasta, Chile into tracking this new cigar-shaped object as it advanced through space and the edges of our Solar System. Dozens of other observatories soon followed suit both on Earth and in Outer Space, including…
