Astronomers from the Breakthrough Listen initiative are reporting preliminary results and making initial data available from its observations of 1I/2017 U1 ‘Oumuamua, the first asteroid of extrasolar origin identified in the Solar System.
This artist’s impression shows the first interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua. Image credit: M. Kornmesser / ESO.
“It is great to see data pouring in from observations of this novel and interesting source,” said Breakthrough Listen’s Dr. Andrew Siemion, Director of Berkeley SETI Research Center.
“Our team is excited to see what additional observations and analyses will reveal.”
Breakthrough Listen’s observation campaign began on December 13, 2017, at 3:45 p.m. ET.
“The initial block of observations — the first of a planned four blocks — ran from 3:45 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. ET, using the Breakthrough Listen instrument on the Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia,” the astronomers said.
The instrument observed ‘Oumuamua across four radio bands (corresponding to four of the radio receivers available at Green Bank, denoted L, S, X, and C), spanning billions of individual channels across the 1 to 12 GHz range.
It accumulated 90 TB of raw data over a 2 hour observation of ‘Oumuamua itself.
Gemini South telescope color composite image of ‘Oumuamua. Image credit: Gemini Observatory / AURA / NSF.
“A search for signals that may be of artificial origin has begun, but despite the impressive computational power of the Breakthrough Listen computing cluster at Green Bank, the large data volumes mean that this will take some time to complete,” the researchers said.
The Breakthrough Listen software combs the data for narrow bandwidth signals that are drifting in frequency.
By matching the rate at which these signals drift to the expected drift due to the motion of ‘Oumuamua, in addition to rejecting interfering signals from human technology that do not match the sky position of the primary target, the software attempts to identify any signals that might be coming from the asteroid itself.
“No such signals have been detected, although the analysis is not yet complete,” the scientists said.
“So far, data from the S-band receiver (covering frequencies from 1.7 to 2.6 GHz) has been processed, and analysis of the remaining three bands is ongoing.”
A subset of the S-band data is available for public inspection in the Breakthrough Listen archive.
