On the dynamical history of the interstellar object 'Oumuamua?

TL;DR

This study investigates the possible stellar origins of 'Oumuamua by analyzing its past trajectories and close encounters with nearby stars, identifying potential parent stars within 60 parsecs.

Contribution

It provides a detailed dynamical analysis of 'Oumuamua's past motion and identifies candidate stars that could be its origin, using a large stellar dataset and orbit simulations.

Findings

UCAC4 535-065571 is a probable origin candidate within 60 pc

GJ 876 is also a favorable candidate

'Oumuamua's orbit is well determined and not significantly perturbed

Abstract

1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua is the first interstellar object recorded inside the Solar System. We try to answer the main question: where does it come from? To this aim we searched for close encounters between 'Oumuamua and all nearby stars with known kinematic data during their past motion.We had checked over 200 thousand stars and found just a handful of candidates. If we limit our investigation to within a 60 pc sphere surrounding the Sun, then the most probable candidate for the 'Oumuamua parent stellar habitat is the star UCAC4 535-065571. However GJ 876 is also a favourable candidate. Moreover, the origin of 'Oumuamua from a much more distant source is still an open question. Additionally, we found that the quality of the original orbit of 'Oumuamua is accurate enough for such a study and that none of the checked stars had perturbed its motion significantly. All numerical results of this research are available in the Appendix.