In November 2017, scientists pointed NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope toward the object known as ‘Oumuamua—the first known interstellar object to visit our solar system.
The infrared Spitzer was one of many telescopes pointed at ‘Oumuamua in the weeks after its discovery that October.
‘Oumuamua was too faint for Spitzer to detect when it looked more than two months after the object’s closest approach to Earth in early September. However, the “non-detection” puts a new limit on how large the strange object can be. The results are reported in a new study published today in the Astronomical Journal and coauthored by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
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