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A brief visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar asteroid
Karen J. Meech, Robert Weryk, Marco Micheli et al., 2017. Nature.
The discovery paper. Reports the Pan-STARRS1 detection, the hyperbolic orbit, the absence of any coma down to deep limits despite a perihelion at 0.25 au, a red surface, a light curve varying by about 2.5 magnitudes that implies a body about ten times longer than wide, a mean radius of about 100 m for an albedo of 0.04, and a revised estimate of the space density of such objects. Nature 552, 378-381.
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The primary record of what the object looked like; its source-data spreadsheets are the first photometry table.
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Cite it
Meech, K. J., Weryk, R., Micheli, M., Kleyna, J. T., Hainaut, O. R., Jedicke, R., Wainscoat, R. J., Chambers, K. C., Denneau, L., Keane, J. V., Yang, B., & Fitzsimmons, A. (2017). A brief visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar asteroid. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25020
@article{meech2017brief,
author = {Meech, Karen J. and Weryk, Robert and Micheli, Marco and Kleyna, Jan T. and Hainaut, Olivier R. and Jedicke, Robert and Wainscoat, Richard J. and Chambers, Kenneth C. and Denneau, Larry and Keane, Jacqueline V. and Yang, Bin and Fitzsimmons, Alan},
title = {A brief visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar asteroid},
journal = {Nature},
year = {2017},
doi = {10.1038/nature25020},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25020}
}TY - JOUR TI - A brief visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar asteroid AU - Meech, Karen J. AU - Weryk, Robert AU - Micheli, Marco AU - Kleyna, Jan T. AU - Hainaut, Olivier R. AU - Jedicke, Robert AU - Wainscoat, Richard J. AU - Chambers, Kenneth C. AU - Denneau, Larry AU - Keane, Jacqueline V. AU - Yang, Bin AU - Fitzsimmons, Alan PY - 2017 JO - Nature DO - 10.1038/nature25020 UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25020 ER -
Meech, Karen J. et al.. “A brief visit from a red and extremely elongated interstellar asteroid.” Nature (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature25020.