Thread: 'Oumuamua
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Old November 27th 17, 10:07 PM posted to sci.astro.research
Martin Brown[_3_]
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Default 'Oumuamua

On 27/11/2017 06:44, Richard D. Saam wrote:
'Oumuamua has a rotation period of 8.1 hours,
similar to Kuiper Belt objects
implying a common origin
in the vast depths of interstellar/intergalactic space.
RDS

[[Mod. note -- I don't think the implication is quite that strong.
Oumuamua clearly isn't Rama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendezvous_with_Rama
(which was said to have a 4 minute rotation period), but it's hardly
implausible that some bodies originating in different places might
have roughly similar rotation periods.
-- jt]]


One thing that puzzled me about it was that the light curve was entirely
attributed to a highly elongated shape uniform albedo. What prevents it
from being a more rounded shape but with a large variation in albedo?
(except possibly that maintaining white ice requires precipitation)

Or is an object in space for so long likely to pick up surface muck and
rubbish that is inevitably pretty uniform over the entire surface.

I presume they have done time resolved spectroscopy on it and not
detected anything other than the same sort of surface material?

--
Regards,
Martin Brown