Spotting a possible interstellar object is incredibly rare, and it’s exciting that our UH-operated system caught it,” University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy’s John Tonry said following the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) detection of a high-speed object on July 1,

Late in the evening on July 1, a telescope in Chile that is part of the global, NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) picked up on a new moving dot in the sky, an object traveling past the orbit of Jupiter.

Astronomers have observed an object that originated from beyond our solar system, thought to be an interstellar comet, speeding through our celestial neighborhood.