The solar system has another interstellar visitor, but there’s no question of this one being an alien spacecraft. It’s a true comet and the first we’ve ever confirmed comes from interstellar space, and the Hubble Space Telescope captured some amazing imagery of it. Good thing, too — because it’s never coming back.
You probably remember ‘Oumuamua as the interstellar object that launched a thousand headlines — mostly around the idea that it could be an alien ship of some kind. Needless to say that hypothesis didn’t really pan out, but honestly the object was interesting enough without being an emissary from another world. This new comet, called 2I/Borisov (not as catchy), was first identified in August by an amateur astronomer named Gennady Borisov, who lives in Crimea. Studies by other near-Earth object authorities observed its trajectory and concluded that it did indeed come from interstellar space? How do they know? Well, for one thing, it’s going 110,000 miles per hour, or 177,000 kph. “It’s traveling so fast it almost doesn’t care that the Sun is there,” said UCLA’s David Jewitt, who leads the Hubble team watching 2I/Borisov. (Note that in the gif above, the streaks don’t indicate its speed — those are from the Earth spinning.)![stsci-h-p1953a-f-1106x1106 stsci h p1953a f 1106x1106](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/stsci-h-p1953a-f-1106x1106.png?resize=1024%2C1024&ssl=1)
![trajectory trajectory](https://i0.wp.com/techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/trajectory.png?resize=1024%2C517&ssl=1)
2I/Borisov is passing through the ecliptic at a pretty steep angle and traveling at great speed, more or less ruling out the idea that it’s orbiting the Sun.