One pass, no return: ‘Oumuamua whipped around the Sun at 87 km/s on an open hyperbola

Asked:“How omuamua moves through solar system get data and show it visually”

132 JPL Horizons state vectors (solution #16, heliocentric J2000 ecliptic, dates in TDB) trace 1I/‘Oumuamua from 5.5 AU above the ecliptic in January 2017, through perihelion at 0.256 AU on 2017-09-09.5, out past 8.3 AU by October 2018. Eccentricity 1.2011 — greater than 1, so the path is unbound. One AU is 149,597,870.7 km.

Colour is phase, not identity:inboundsolar turn (inside 0.6 AU)outbound · grey grid: ecliptic plane, 1 AU squares · drag to rotate

What the shape means

A closed orbit has eccentricity below 1. ‘Oumuamua’s is 1.2011338, so the Sun bent its track into a hyperbola but never captured it: gravity accelerated the object from about 32 km/s at 5.5 AU to 87.3 km/s at perihelion, then spent that speed on the way out, leaving roughly 30 km/s at 8 AU — still above escape speed. The orbit is inclined 122.74° to the ecliptic: it dived in from high above the plane, retrograde, and left on a different tilted direction.

Distance down, speed up — then the mirror

Findings

Peak heliocentric speed in the hourly data is 87.3 km/s at 2017-Sep-09 09:00 TDB, 0.2561 AU from the Sun — inside Mercury’s orbit. ssd.jpl.nasa.gov

Eccentricity 1.2011338, perihelion 0.2559116 AU, inclination 122.7417° — JPL orbit solution #16, fit to 207 observations. ssd.jpl.nasa.gov

The object was discovered in October 2017, a month after perihelion — every point before then is a backward extrapolation of the fitted orbit. ssd.jpl.nasa.gov

The solution includes measured non-gravitational acceleration (Micheli et al. 2018); JPL warns behaviour outside the observed arc 2017-10-14 to 2018-01-02 is assumed, the pre-October prediction especially uncertain. ssd.jpl.nasa.gov

State vectors, 60-day steps

Date (TDB)	X (AU)	Y (AU)	Z (AU)	Sun dist (AU)	Speed (km/s)	Source
2017-Jan-01	0.035	-3.162	4.494	5.50	31.9	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2017-Mar-02	-0.104	-2.560	3.552	4.38	33.2	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2017-May-01	-0.241	-1.923	2.564	3.21	35.3	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2017-Jun-30	-0.368	-1.220	1.487	1.96	40.0	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2017-Aug-29	-0.373	-0.266	0.134	0.48	66.4	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2017-Oct-28	1.313	0.569	0.045	1.43	44.0	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2017-Dec-27	2.574	0.803	0.530	2.75	36.6	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2018-Feb-25	3.685	0.988	0.988	3.94	33.9	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2018-Apr-26	4.730	1.155	1.428	5.07	32.4	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2018-Jun-25	5.734	1.312	1.857	6.17	31.4	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2018-Aug-24	6.713	1.463	2.277	7.24	30.7	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov
2018-Oct-23	7.672	1.610	2.690	8.29	30.2	ssd.jpl.nasa.gov

Data: NASA/JPL Horizons API, small body 1I/‘Oumuamua (A/2017 U1), orbit solution #16 of 2018-06-26 including non-gravitational perturbations. 132 geometric state vectors merged from three extracts (10-day, 2-day and hourly steps), heliocentric J2000 ecliptic frame, dates TDB; speed is the vector magnitude, AU/day converted at 1 AU = 149,597,870.7 km. Table shows every sixth 10-day row for space. Points outside the observed arc (2017-10-14 to 2018-01-02) are model extrapolation.

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