What are interstellar objects?

Interstellar objects are space travelers that come from far away and visit our solar system.

Imagine you're playing with your toy cars on the floor. One day, a car zooms in from another room, it's not yours, but it’s having fun too! That’s kind of like what interstellar objects do. They’re like space toys that come from other parts of the galaxy.

Interstellar objects are like guests visiting your neighborhood. They don’t live here, they came all the way from another star system or even farther away.

For example, there’s a famous guest called ‘Oumuamua, which means “messenger from afar” in Hawaiian. It visited our solar system in 2017 and zipped past the sun before going back into space, like a friendly visitor who said goodbye and went home.

These travelers don’t need magic to move; they just keep traveling through the space between stars, sometimes for millions of years, until they come close enough to Earth that we can see them. It’s like getting a letter from someone you’ve never met before, exciting and full of mystery!