Letter to the Editor

Investigating the dynamical history of the interstellar object ’Oumuamua

¹ Astronomical Observatory Institute, Faculty of Physics, A. Mickiewicz University, Słoneczna 36, Poznań, Poland
e-mail: dybol@amu.edu.pl
² Space Research Centre of Polish Academy of Sciences, Bartycka 18A, Warszawa, Poland
e-mail: mkr@cbk.waw.pl

Received: 16 November 2017
Accepted: 26 January 2018

Abstract

Here we try to find the origin of 1I/2017 U1 ’Oumuamua, the first interstellar object recorded inside the solar system. To this aim, we searched for close encounters between ’Oumuamua and all nearby stars with known kinematic data during their past motion. We had checked over 200 thousand stars and found just a handful of candidates. If we limit our investigation to within a 60 pc sphere surrounding the Sun, then the most probable candidate for the ’Oumuamua parent stellar habitat is the star UCAC4 535-065571. However GJ 876 is also a favourable candidate. However, the origin of ’Oumuamua from a much more distant source is still an open question. Additionally, we found that the quality of the original orbit of ’Oumuamua is accurate enough for such a study and that none of the checked stars had perturbed its motion significantly. All numerical results of this research are available in the appendix.