On a bright, beautiful, sunny Hawaiian morning, Robert Warrick sifted through images taken

the night before by the giant Pan-Stars telescope at the summit of Haleakala on the island

of Maui, just another ordinary Friday at the office.

And then he spotted this thing.

I thought it was just a regular asteroid candidate that we would see, you know, moving quite

fast just as it comes close to the Earth.

It was only after I went back and actually found it in two images from the night before.

I noticed there was something audible to its motion.

The trajectory seemed weird.

Based on the first night that we saw it and the two images from the previous night, I noticed

it wasn't described perfectly by a bound orbit.

A bound orbit, meaning an orbit influenced by our sun's gravity.

The shape of this thing also appeared unusual.

So we infer that it's a really long rotating object.

And it moved fast, super fast.

When we saw it, it was going at 46 kilometers per second.

That's a rip-roaring 102,899 miles per hour.

Adding all that together, and Robert realized he'd come across what was likely an interstellar

object, meaning it had come from someplace outside our solar system.

And based on how fast it moved, wouldn't be sticking around for very long.

So the thing was because it was moving so fast and away from us, it was becoming fainter

and fainter as time went on.

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