Alien Visitors

After decades of searching, in 2017 the first interstellar object from another Solar system was discovered passing our planet. We are now starting to uncover a wide range of behaviours and makeups of these brief visitors to our shores. This talk will cover the main findings to date, and what it tells us about their home planetary systems. We will also look ahead to what we hope might be discovered in coming years using both telescopes and space missions.

Alan Fitzsimmons is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at Queen's University Belfast. He has spent over 40 years performing research asteroids, comets, and now Interstellar Objects. To do this he has used a multitude of telescopes on Earth and orbiting above, and has also worked on missions for NASA and ESA. He is rather happy that neither asteroid Fitzsimmons nor comet Fitzsimmons will hit the Earth in the coming millennia.