![]() Analysis of the LCO images showed a fuzzy coma around the object, indicating that it was active and was indeed a comet, even though it is still out at a remarkable distance of more than 1,800,000,000 miles, more than double Saturn's distance from the sun. Michele Bannister at New Zealand's University of Canterbury. But then the others were clear enough and gosh: there it was, definitely a beautiful little fuzzy dot, not at all crisp like its neighboring stars," said Dr. The first image had the comet obscured by a satellite streak and my heart sank. "Since we're a team based all around the world, it just happened that it was my afternoon, while the other folks were asleep. Astronomers in New Zealand who are members of the LCO Outbursting Objects Key (LOOK) Project were the first to notice the new comet. The images from one of LCO's 1-meter telescopes hosted at the South African Astronomical Observatory, came in around 9pm PDT on Monday night June 22. "Fortunately LCO has a network of robotic telescopes across the world, particularly in the Southern Hemisphere, and we were able to quickly get images from the LCO telescopes in South Africa,"' explained Tim Lister. Tim Lister, Staff Scientist at Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO). "Since the new object was far in the south and quite faint, we knew there wouldn't be many other telescopes that could observe it," says Dr. Las Cumbres Observatory was quickly able to determine whether the object had become an active comet in the three years since it was first seen by the Dark Energy Survey. C/2014 UN271 was inbound from the cold outer reaches of the solar system, so rapid imaging was needed to find out: when would the big new-found world start to show a comet's tail? Anticipation was immediately high among astronomers. At the time of the announcement, there was no indication that this was an active world. C/2014 UN271 was found by reprocessing four years of data from the Dark Energy Survey, which was carried out using the 4-m Blanco telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile between 20. The object, which is named Comet C/2014 UN271 Bernardinelli-Bernstein after its two discoverers, was first announced on Saturday, June 19th, 2021. Credit: NASAĪ newly discovered visitor to the outer edges of our solar system has been shown to be the largest known comet ever, thanks to the rapid response telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory. The comets’ path is shown in gray when it is below the plane of the planets and in bold white when it is above the plane. An orbital diagram showing the path of Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) through the Solar System.
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