Rendesvous with Oumuamua

OK, if you don't get the reference in the title of this post, I'll help.

Back to the Hugos: Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C Clarke

Now, I won't give very much away, but suffice it to say for the purposes here is that Rama was a very big, unusually shaped object that came into the Solar System from interstellar space.

OK, just a very short time ago, the Solar System had an encounter with an asteroid from interstellar space.  And it was reasonably big (though not nearly as big as Rama).

And now it turns out it was very unusually shaped, too.

ESO Observations Show First Interstellar Asteroid is Like Nothing Seen Before

Here are a couple of different renderings of what it might look like up close.  Note that these are artistic conceptions, not photographs.

Now let's note that we already know asteroids can have unusual shapes.  Consider Ida, which was encountered by Galileo on the way to Jupiter:

I used this picture as a reminder that Ida was accompanied by the cute little moonlet named Dactyl.

So anyway, we know asteroids can have unusual shapes.  It's just fun that Oumuamua came in from outer space and was unusually shaped, too.  This allows our imaginations to roam wildly.