Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2016

12 JULY-AUGUST 2016 SPACE CHRONICLES r o c k y body, rath- er than a contemporary asteroid that strayed out. As A stronomers have found a unique object that appears to be made of inner Solar System material from the time of Earth’s formation, which has been preserved in the Oort Cloud far from the Sun for billions of years. Obser- vations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and the Canada-France-Hawai`i Telescope, show that C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) is the first object to be discovered on a long- period cometary orbit that has the charac- teristics of a pristine inner Solar System as- teroid. It may provide im- portant clues about how the Solar System formed. In a paper published in the journal Science Advances , lead author Karen Meech of the University of Hawai`i’s Insti- tute for Astronomy and her col- leagues conclude that C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS) formed in the inner Solar System at the same time as the Earth itself, but was ejected at a very early stage. Their observa- tions indicate that it is an ancient Fragment from Earth’s f returns after billions of A rtist's impression of the unique object C/2014 S3 (PANSTARRS). Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope, and the Canada France Hawai`i Telescope, show that this is the first object to be discovered that is on a long-period cometary orbit, but that has the characteristics of a pristine inner Solar System asteroid. It may provide important clues about how the Solar System formed. [ESO/M. Kornmesser] by ESO such, it is one of the potential building blocks of the rocky planets, such as the Earth, that was expelled from the