Publications (20)
An overview of stray light findings and interpretation during on-sky commissioning of LSSTCam
Gabriele Rodeghiero, Alex Drlica-Wagner, Alessio Taranto +78
Wide-field telescopes are intrinsically difficult to shield from unwanted stray and scattered light, while the search to identify sources of contaminating light is frequently a cha…
Rubin ToO 2024: Envisioning the Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST Target of Opportunity program
Igor Andreoni, Raffaella Margutti, John Banovetz +86
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) at Vera C. Rubin Observatory is planned to begin in the Fall of 2025. The LSST survey cadence has been designed via a community-driven pr…
A near-Sun Solar System Twilight Survey with LSST
Rob Seaman, Paul Abell, Eric Christensen +9
We propose a LSST Solar System near-Sun Survey, to be implemented during twilight hours, that extends the seasonal reach of LSST to its maximum as fresh sky is uncovered at about 5…
NEOMOD: A New Orbital Distribution Model for Near Earth Objects
David Nesvorny, Rogerio Deienno, William F. Bottke +10
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of aste…
A possible close supermassive black-hole binary in a quasar with optical periodicity
Matthew J. Graham, S. George Djorgovski, Daniel Stern +6
Quasars have long been known to be variable sources at all wavelengths. Their optical variability is stochastic, can be due to a variety of physical mechanisms, and is well-describ…
Pre-discovery Activity of New Interstellar Comet 2I/Borisov Beyond 5 AU
Quanzhi Ye, Michael S. P. Kelley, Bryce T. Bolin +15
Comet 2I/Borisov, the first unambiguous interstellar comet ever found, was discovered in August 2019 at au from the Sun on its inbound leg. No pre-discovery detection beyon…
1100 days in the life of the supernova 2018ibb -- The best pair-instability supernova candidate, to date
Steve Schulze, Claes Fransson, Alexandra Kozyreva +63
Abridged - Stars with ZAMS masses between 140 and are thought to explode as pair-instability supernovae (PISNe). During their thermonuclear runaway, PISNe can produce…
Visible spectroscopy from the Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS): Taxonomic dependence on asteroid size
Maxime Devogele, Nicholas Moskovitz, Audrey Thirouin +14
The Mission Accessible Near-Earth Object Survey (MANOS) aims to observe and characterize small (mean absolute magnitude H ~ 25 mag) Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that are accessible by…
Antineutrino reactor safeguards - a case study
Eric Christensen, Patrick Huber, Patrick Jaffke
Antineutrinos have been proposed as a means of reactor safeguards for more than 30 years and there has been impressive experimental progress in neutrino detection. In this paper we…
A common origin for dynamically associated near-Earth asteroid pairs
Nicholas Moskovitz, Petr Fatka, Davide Farnocchia +19
Though pairs of dynamically associated asteroids in the Main Belt have been identified and studied for over a decade, very few pair systems have been identified in the near-Earth a…
Physics Performance of a Low-Luminosity Low Energy Neutrino Factory
Eric Christensen, Pilar Coloma, Patrick Huber
We investigate the minimal performance, in terms of beam luminosity and detector size, of a neutrino factory to achieve a competitive physics reach for the determination of the mas…
NEOMOD 2: An Updated Model of Near-Earth Objects from a Decade of Catalina Sky Survey Observations
David Nesvorny, David Vokrouhlicky, Frank Shelly +9
Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) is a major survey of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). In a recent work, we used CSS observations from 2005-2012 to develop a new population model of NEOs (NEOMO…
Deep Co-Added Sky from Catalina Sky Survey Images
Akshat Singhal, Varun Bhalerao, Ashish A. Mahabal +12
A number of synoptic sky surveys are underway or being planned. Typically they are done with small telescopes and relatively short exposure times. A search for transient or variabl…
Establishing Earth's Minimoon Population through Characterization of Asteroid 2020 CD
Grigori Fedorets, Marco Micheli, Robert Jedicke +20
We report on our detailed characterization of Earth's second known temporary natural satellite, or minimoon, asteroid 2020 CD3. An artificial origin can be ruled out based on its a…
Understanding extreme quasar optical variability with CRTS: II. Changing-state quasars
Matthew J. Graham, Nicholas P. Ross, Daniel Stern +8
We present the results of a systematic search for quasars in the Catalina Real-time Transient Survey exhibiting both strong photometric and spectroscopic variability over a decadal…
Recent formation and likely cometary activity of near-Earth asteroid pair 2019 PR2 -- 2019 QR6
Petr Fatka, Nicholas A. Moskovitz, Petr Pravec +13
Asteroid pairs are genetically related asteroids that recently separated (few million years), but still reside on similar heliocentric orbits. A few hundred of these systems hav…
Understanding extreme quasar optical variability with CRTS: I. Major AGN flares
Matthew J. Graham, S. G. Djorgovski, Andrew J. Drake +5
There is a large degree of variety in the optical variability of quasars and it is unclear whether this is all attributable to a single (set of) physical mechanism(s). We present t…
A systematic search for close supermassive black hole binaries in the Catalina Real-Time Transient Survey
Matthew J. Graham, S. G. Djorgovski, Daniel Stern +6
Hierarchical assembly models predict a population of supermassive black hole (SMBH) binaries. These are not resolvable by direct imaging but may be detectable via periodic variabil…
Antineutrino monitoring for the Iranian heavy water reactor
Eric Christensen, Patrick Huber, Patrick Jaffke +1
In this note we discuss the potential application of antineutrino monitoring to the Iranian heavy water reactor at Arak, the IR-40, as a non-proliferation measure. We demonstrate t…
SAGUARO: Time-domain Infrastructure for the Fourth Gravitational-wave Observing Run and Beyond
Griffin Hosseinzadeh, Kerry Paterson, Jillian C. Rastinejad +14
We present upgraded infrastructure for Searches after Gravitational Waves Using ARizona Observatories (SAGUARO) during LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA's fourth gravitational-wave (GW) obser…