Past trajectories of the Sun, 'Oumuamua and one of its potential home stars
Date: 25 September 2018
Satellite: Gaia
Depicts: Trajectories of the Sun, 'Oumuamua and one of its potential home stars
Copyright: C.A.L. Bailer-Jones et al, 2018
Animation showing the relative trajectories of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua (shown in blue), the Sun (shown in yellow) and one of the four stars that could be 'Oumuamua's home (shown in red and sampled many times to convey the corresponding uncertainty) over the past seven million years.
The left panel shows the view on the plane of our Galaxy, while the right panel shows the view perpendicular to the plane. Both panels are in Galactic coordinates, with the Galactic centre being located at (0,0,0).
The trajectories of the four stars were reconstructed using data from the second release of ESA's Gaia mission, while the trajectory of 'Oumuamua was calculated using data from the Pan-STARRS telescopes in Hawaii, ESA's Optical Ground Station telescope in Tenerife, Canary Islands, ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile, and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, among others.
