First Instellar Object A/2017 U1 just visited our Solar System, travelling 15.8 miles per second. What does Tom Know?

This is the best tl;dr I could make, original reduced by 31%. (I'm a bot)

"We are just scrambling right now to secure big telescope time, prepare our observations and download the data," said Karen Meech, an astronomer at the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy.

Because the object came from outside our solar system, it may be made up of completely different material than the asteroids and comets that we have studied.

She and other astronomers think that in the next few weeks they will have more insight into the composition and size of A/2017 U1, and in time, where exactly it came from.

Dr. Meech noted that scientists did not have much warning about this object when it came into the solar system because it was blocked by the brightness of the sun.

There is no need to panic, said Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer.

"The near-earth asteroids are many times, hundreds of thousands of times, more likely to occur, and even those are extremely rare events," Mr. Johnson said.

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