No Rotational Variability in C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) at 23.8 au and 21.1 au as Seen by TESS

Abstract

Abstract The recent discovery of a hundred-kilometer-scale comet, C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein), has provoked interest in the activity displayed by such a large body inbound from the Oort cloud. We examine the serendipitous observation of UN271 in long-cadence imaging by the TESS satellite in 2018 and 2020, while Bernardinelli-Bernstein was at 23.8 and 21.3 au, for any notable periodicity. Bernardinelli-Bernstein does not display detectable rotational variability above the noise level in these data.