Newly Discovered Comet A117uUD Ejected from Solar System After Close Encounter with Saturn

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

Researchers found a comet that walked out or was ejected Solar system after passing The planet Saturn at close range.

Referring from Space.com, on Friday (2/8), the speed of the comet that threw Saturn out of the solar system reached more than 10,800 kilometers per hour.

The celestial body was named A117uUD. The comet was only discovered by researchers on June 14, 2024 with the Earth’s Asteroid Impact Late Warning System (ATLAS). Previously, researchers discovered that A117uUD has an orbit around the Sun.

After its closest approach to Saturn in 2022, the comet was ejected from the solar system. The orbit around the sun changes forever.

Using models to speed up A117uUD’s path, the team found that it would leave the solar system at about 10,800 km/h. That’s about 4.5 times faster than a Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter jet.

The second comet

In the history of modern astronomical observations, A117uUD is the second comet to be ejected from the solar system.

Previously, C/1980E1(Bowell) was the first comet to be ejected from the solar system. Comet Bowel was thrown out of the solar system after it ‘encountered Jupiter’ in December 1980.

In the results of the research published in the journal Research Notes of the AAS, researchers estimate that this is not the only event in which a comet was ejected from the solar system.

“The fact that there are two comet emissions [A117uUD dan Bowell] “After planetary events observed in less than 45 years indicate that such events occur very often,” they wrote.

In addition to comets being thrown out, researchers also understand that there are comets that have also entered the Solar System.

The first solar system ‘smuggler’ discovered in the history of astronomy was an unusual cigar-shaped asteroid. It was later named 1I/’Oumuamua (‘Oumuamua).

Oumuamua comes from a Hawaiian word which roughly translates as ‘messenger from afar who arrived first’. It was discovered in 2017, and is now outside Neptune’s orbit after passing through the Kuiper belt, a ring of icy bodies near the outer edge of the solar system.

In addition to Oumuamua, ‘Comet 2I/Borisov’ (2I/ Borisov) is another interstellar ‘attack’ into the Solar System that humans have discovered.

2I/Borisov was discovered by Crimean amateur astronomer Gennady Borisov on 30 August 2019.

Its speed is amazing, reaching 177 thousand kilometers per hour or about 150 times faster than sound – 75 times faster than the top speed of the Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter plane.

Like ‘Oumuamua, 2I/Borisov was heading away from the Solar System, never to return.

[Gambas:Video CNN]

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