Matthew Hopkins

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, specialising in the Galactic origins of interstellar objects (ISOs): asteroids and comets from outside the Solar System. These objects must have formed in other planetary systems, around other stars across the Milky Way, meaning their properties depend on both the properties of the stars they once called home and the history of the Galaxy we live in.

So far only three ISOs have ever been discovered, but with the recently-begun LSST survey we will soon begin finding multiple every year. By combining data from a range of stellar surveys, Galactic dynamics, and simulations of Solar System discovery surveys, I predict the future discoverable population of ISOs and place the growing sample of known objects in their Galactic context.