C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein): The Nearly Spherical Cow of Comets
@article{Bernardinelli2021C2014U, title={C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein): The Nearly Spherical Cow of Comets}, author={Pedro H. Bernardinelli and Gary M. Bernstein and Benjamin T. Montet and Robert J. Weryk and Richard J. Wainscoat and Michel Aguena and Sahar Allam and Felipe Andrade-Oliveira and James T. Annis and Santiago {\'A}vila and E. Bertin and David Brooks and David L. Burke and A. Carnero Rosell and Matias Carrasco Kind and Jorge Carretero and R. Cawthon and C. J. Conselice and Matteo Costanzi and L. N. da Costa and M. E. S. Pereira and Juan Carlos de Vicente and H. Thomas Diehl and S. Everett and I. Ferrero and Brenna L. Flaugher and Joshua A. Frieman and Juan Garc'ia-Bellido and Enrique Gazta{\~n}aga and David W. Gerdes and Daniel Gruen and Robert A. Gruendl and Julia Gschwend and Gaston R. Guti{\'e}rrez and Samuel R. Hinton and Devon L. Hollowood and Klaus Honscheid and David J. James and Kyler W. Kuehn and Nikolay Kuropatkin and Ofer Lahav and Marcio A. G. Maia and Jennifer L. Marshall and Felipe Menanteau and Ramon Miquel and Robert Morgan and R. L. C. Ogando and Francisco Paz-Chinch{\'o}n and A. Pieres and Andr'es A. Plazas Malag'on and Mario Rodr{\'i}guez-Monroy and A. K. Romer and Aaron Roodman and E. Sanchez and Michael S. Schubnell and S. Serrano and Ignacio Sevilla-Noarbe and M. Smith and Marcelle Soares-Santos and Eric Suchyta and Mollye E. C. Swanson and Gregory G. Tarl{\'e} and C. To and Michael Troxel and T. N. Varga and Alistair R. Walker and Y. Zhang}, journal={The Astrophysical Journal Letters}, year={2021}, volume={921} }
Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), incoming from the Oort cloud, is remarkable in having the brightest (and presumably largest) nucleus of any well-measured comet and having been discovered at the heliocentric distance r h ≈ 29 au, farther than any Oort cloud comet. In this work, we describe the discovery process and observations and the properties that can be inferred from images recorded until the first reports of activity in 2021 June. The orbit has i = 95°, with a perihelion of…
6 Citations
A Look at Outbursts of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) near 20 au
- Physics, GeologyThe Astrophysical Journal Letters
- 2022
Cometary activity may be driven by ices with very low sublimation temperatures, such as carbon monoxide ice, which can sublimate at distances well beyond 20 au. This point is emphasized by the…
Hubble Space Telescope Detection of the Nucleus of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein)
- Physics, GeologyThe Astrophysical Journal Letters
- 2022
We present a high-resolution observation of the distant comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli–Bernstein) using the Hubble Space Telescope on 2022 January 8. The signal of the nucleus was successfully…
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A Search of the Full Six Years of the Dark Energy Survey for Outer Solar System Objects
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We present a search for outer solar system objects in the 6 yr of data from the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The DES covered a contiguous 5000 deg2 of the southern sky with ≈80,000 3 deg2 exposures in…
The unpopular Package: A Data-driven Approach to Detrending TESS Full-frame Image Light Curves
- Physics, GeologyThe Astronomical Journal
- 2022
The majority of observed pixels on the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) are delivered in the form of full-frame images (FFIs). However, the FFIs contain systematic effects such as…
The LCO Outbursting Objects Key Project: Overview and Year 1 Status
- Physics, GeologyThe Planetary Science Journal
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The LCO Outbursting Objects Key (LOOK) Project uses the telescopes of the Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO) Network to (1) systematically monitor a sample of previously discovered over the whole sky, to…
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