A bare comet nucleus turns up in archived Subaru images taken for something else
Astronomers searching public archives found comet 28P/Neujmin in Hyper Suprime-Cam images from the 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope that had been taken for unrelated projects. The comet was more than 10 astronomical units from the Sun, farther out than Saturn, and cold enough that no coma hid its nucleus.
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A bare comet nucleus turns up in archived Subaru images taken for something else Astronomers searching public archives found comet 28P/Neujmin in Hyper Suprime-Cam images from the 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope that had been taken for unrelated projects. The comet was more than 10 astronomical units from the Sun, farther out than Saturn, and cold enough that no coma hid its nucleus. A coma forms when a nucleus warms near the Sun and vents gas, so a distant comet shows its solid body directly.[1]
Details in the report
Astronomers searching public archives found comet 28P/Neujmin in Hyper Suprime-Cam images from the 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope that had been taken for unrelated projects. The comet was more than 10 astronomical units from the Sun, farther out than Saturn, and cold enough that no coma hid its nucleus. A coma forms when a nucleus warms near the Sun and vents gas, so a distant comet shows its solid body directly. The team reported the find in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan after a systematic trawl of images the survey had released for other scientific goals; the frame covering the comet spans roughly nine full moons on the sky. Archives like this are searched long after the original observing runs end, and this discovery cost no new telescope time.[1]
Additional context
A bare comet nucleus turns up in archived Subaru images taken for something else Astronomers searching public archives found comet 28P/Neujmin in Hyper Suprime-Cam images from the 8.2-metre Subaru Telescope that had been taken for unrelated projects. The comet was more than 10 astronomical units from the Sun, farther out than Saturn, and cold enough that no coma hid its nucleus. The team reported the find in Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan after a systematic trawl of images the survey had released for other scientific goals; the frame covering the comet spans roughly nine full moons on the sky. Archives like this are searched long after the original observing runs end, and this discovery cost no new telescope time.[1]
