Meet ‘Oumuamua, the Interstellar Cigar


In Arthur C. Clarke's 1973 science-fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama, Earthlings discover and then investigate an interstellar "asteroid" that turns out to be a huge alien spaceship shaped like a long cylinder.

Life, it seems, sometimes imitates art.

In the days after the discovery of ‘Oumuamua, the first (real) interstellar object ever known to pass through our solar system, astronomers worldwide went on the astronomical equivalent of "Red Alert" and pointed their biggest guns at the unexpected interloper. "We dropped everything," explains Laura Ferrarese, who coordinated observations by the Gemini South observatory in Chile.

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astro...stellar-cigar/