• Oumuamua.The first interstellar asteroid we see is also the strangest
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The spacecraft currently available allow us to explore only the planets and moons of our solar system. The Voyager twin probes, launched in 1977, have managed to cross their border and become the man-made objects that have gone farther, but for now it is not possible to venture further. However, for comets and asteroids there are no technological limits or borders and therefore they can reach our solar system after traveling for possibly hundreds of millions of years.

Detecting them is not easy, so after a long time developing theories about their existence, the discovery, two years ago, of the first interstellar comet, Oumuamua, was welcomed with great enthusiasm. For being the first object that comes from another star system and for its strange form and behavior, which gave rise to a debate about its possible extraterrestrial origin. Oumuamua was traveling at a very high speed, it had an elongated shape - reminiscent of a cucumber - and unlike what is usual in comets, it did not emit gases despite being close to the Sun when it was discovered.

After that discovery, a team of Polish scientists led by Piotr Guziz, developed a specific computer program to find other interstellar comets in the sky. The program, dubbed Interstellar Crusher , gave its first alert on September 8 : it had found an object that, according to its discoverers, is an interstellar comet. However, as detailed this week in the journal Nature Astronomy, its appearance is nothing extravagant and closely resembles the comets of our system alone r.

Two days after the alert, its existence was confirmed by the William Herschel telescope on the Canary Island of La Palma. The second identified interstellar comet has been called 2I / Borisov and has been able to be photographed although its discoverers hope to study it in more depth, as it will be observable during the coming months .

For now, they have been able to see their hair or comma, that is, the cloud of dust and gas that surrounds the nucleus of a comet, and its tail. According to his calculations, its nucleus is one kilometer in diameter.

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