01 REAL-TIME CINEMATIC
In 2017, astronomers spotted an object from beyond our Solar System. By the time they discovered it, it had already passed the Sun and was heading out again. Apparently it wasn’t planning to stay.
Launch the experience ↗02 / THE PROJECT
When ʻOumuamua passed through our Solar System in 2017, I was fascinated by the event: a visitor from another star, briefly crossing our neighbourhood before disappearing into interstellar space. I began imagining its journey as music. The composition was my internal visualisation of the encounter, the approach, the passage around the Sun, and the departure into darkness.
I wrote and completed the music long before building this visual project. Yet the sequence of images was already clear in my mind. Years later, I finally had a way to translate that mental film into an interactive, real-time cinematic experience using HTML5 and Babylon.js. The music came first. The animation is the visual world I had been hearing all along.
The composition is part of my music catalogue, while this page tells the story behind its visual interpretation.
Experience the journey ↗A TRUE STORY. AN INTERPRETED IMAGE.
ʻOumuamua was far too small and distant for a detailed photograph. Astronomers studied its changing brightness, colour and trajectory to work out what it might be like. The elongated, tumbling object in illustrations is an interpretation of those observations, not a photograph.
03 / THE ENCOUNTER
ʻOumuamua passed closest to the Sun on 9 September 2017, but astronomers did not discover it until 19 October. It was already moving away, leaving them only a short time to study the first confirmed interstellar object observed in our Solar System.
Discovered by the Pan-STARRS1 telescope in Hawaii on 19 October 2017, it became the first confirmed interstellar object detected passing through our Solar System. Its formal designation, 1I/2017 U1, makes the distinction official.
ʻOumuamua comes from Hawaiian and is commonly translated as “a messenger from afar arriving first.” It was named by the team that discovered it. It’s a much better name than 1I/2017 U1, although admittedly the competition is not fierce.
Its path around the Sun was hyperbolic, not a closed ellipse. With an orbital eccentricity greater than one, it was moving fast enough to escape the Sun's gravity. It swept past the Sun and continued back into interstellar space.
Its brightness changed dramatically as it tumbled, suggesting an unusual, strongly elongated or flattened shape. The exact geometry remains unknown, as does its original home system. Its actual shape remains uncertain, and we still don’t know which star system it came from.
Measurements showed a small non-gravitational acceleration as it travelled outward. Comet-like outgassing is one explanation, but telescopes saw no obvious dust coma or comet tail. The physical mechanism is still part of the scientific discussion.
My real-time animation uses stylised planet sizes, lighting, a glowing motion trail and a reconstructed shape to tell the story clearly. These are artistic choices. The real ʻOumuamua was not observed with a bright blue tail. That is one artistic liberty I took to make the journey easier to follow.