Another potential interstellar object discovered

It currently has only a temporary designation of gb00234 and is still on the possible comet confirmation page of the minor planet center, so it hasn't been given an official designation yet.
[link to minorplanetcenter.net (secure)]
Once it receives that designation it will be removed from the above page. The current coordinates put it very low on the eastern horizon at morning twilight here in Florida, making it challenging for me to be able to observe it. I have trees to my east that would block my view.

I may drive out to a remote location tomorrow morning if the weather is good and try to get a look at it with my scope. It's magnitude 18, orders of magnitude too dim to see by naked eye or even most amateur telescopes. It requires very long exposures with a sensitive CCD camera to detect it. Chances are I won't be able to live stream it due to poor cell phone reception at the remote location.

It may also not actually be in a hyperbolic orbit. With only a couple weeks worth of observations we have only seen this object over a very short arc of its orbit, so many possible orbits still fit the data reasonably well. One such possibility is that it's a normal, roughly parabolic orbit (eccentricity close to 1) but non-gravitational acceleration from outgassing is very strong for this comet and pushing it around more than most comets. If that's the case it means it originated in our solar system and strong jets of material from being heated by the sun are creating higher residuals when calculating the trajectory based on a purely gravitational orbit, making the trajectory look unusual. Bill Gray is an expert in orbit determination and here is his take:
[link to groups.yahoo.com (secure)]

Only time will tell whether this is truly another interstellar object or not, but if it is the fact it's of similar brightness and size to other normal comets would seem extremely rare, raising the question of why this one showed up so soon after Oumuamua. Even though lots of observers are watching this object, time itself is a critical factor in refining orbit determinations.


Last Edited by Astromut on 09/11/2019 10:09 AM