Adam Hibberd I sometimes wonder at the short-sightedness of people. The sort of people who scoff and scorn at the far-sighted work which most of my work colleagues and I have dedicated a good deal of our lives to pursue, largely voluntarily. They may argue: We have such and such a problem NOW, how are […]
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Members Newsletter
Welcome to the Members Newsletter of the Initiative and Institute for Interstellar Studies. This edition is again guest edited by John I Davies whose i4is “day job” is editing Principium quarterly and helping with educational outreach. We had an excellent candidate for the role of Content Editor for the Newsletter but she was forced to […]
Project Lyra: Using Jupiter Alone to get to ‘Oumuamua
Adam Hibberd Here is a ‘pork chop plot’ of missions to ‘Oumuamua using a Jupiter powered gravitational assist (or a Jupiter Oberth Manoeuvre, JOM). Refer to the Figure (1). Essentially, what we have are three coordinates where firstly the horizontal axis shows the launch date, the vertical axis shows the flight duration, and for every […]
‘Oumuamua: The State of Play
Adam Hibberd In 2017, an interstellar object was discovered, the first ever to be detected. It was observed by the Hawaiian observatory Pan-STARRS, subsequently studied by many telescopes before disappearing into the distance in January 2018. An estimate on the number density, N (how many per unit volume), in interstellar space was determined based on […]
Member Newsletter
Welcome to the i4is member newsletter! We have a few new items since the last newsletter.
Principium 39
Principium, the quarterly publication of the Initiative and Institute for Interstellar Studies, Number 39.
Why the Stars?
Adam Hibberd November 2022 People may ask the question why we should venture beyond our solar system to explore the stars? Why should we commit precious resources to such an endeavour? I have an answer to this which may to some degree be a personal one. The question boils down to why are we curious? […]
Exploring ‘Oumuamua’s Trajectory – Further Notes
Adam Hibberd November 2022 In my last blog I reported the progress of my work regarding the intriguing little conundrum of the first interstellar object (ISO) to be discovered, designated ‘Oumuamua, in particular my research into its orbit. In fact ‘Oumuamua is puzzling on many counts and I have also in a previous blog elaborated […]