By Pei Xu

In the past decade, Pedro Bernardinelli co-discovered the largest comet in modern times, Comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein. Now, he can expand his research in depth on the Outer Solar System, the region beyond Neptune, in The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project. 

Rubin Observatory is a new astronomy and astrophysics facility under construction in Chile, funded by the U.S. Science Foundation and Department of Energy, Office of Science. It also has an ongoing collaboration with DiRAC at the University of Washington. The LSST project at the Observatory is anticipated to be in full operation next year and last 10 years.

In the upcoming project at the Rubin Observatory, the LSST project aims to map a specific ecliptic plane in the sky every three days to track the moving objects in the outer Solar System. Throughout this process, LSST is expected to find 30,000 to 40,000 trans-Neptunian objects, located beyond Neptune’s orbit. 

By joining the Rubin Observatory, Bernardinelli said it allows him to enhance his investigation with advanced equipment and technologies, including telescopes, cameras, and extensive observing time for the LSST project. 

“People like planets, and it will basically expand our fuel to the solar system, right?” Bernardinelli said. “So we have a new planet, we have to figure out how to get it, how it’s formed, what it’s made off, and all sorts of things.”

Bernardinelli started studying astronomy as an undergraduate at the University of São Paulo in Brazil, where he was involved in cosmology and scientific research. He later completed his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, concentrating on trans-Neptunian objects and the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

Bernardinelli is interested in dealing with data sets that capture observations of newly discovered celestial objects. His research goal in the LSST is to develop effective tools in decoding the data, allowing him to better recognize and interpret their significance, he said. 

“Pedro is meticulous when it comes to both checking his work and checking the conclusions he draws from them which is an absolute must for good impactful science. He is an active member of the DiRAC solar system group, it’s clear that he cares a lot about the underlying science and is truly an expert on trans-Neptunian objects,” said Joachim Moeyens, Research Scientist, who works with Bernardinelli in the lab.

Bernardinelli said he aims to explore statistical questions, such as identifying the moving patterns of trans-Neoptunian objects, which would contribute to the broader understanding of the outer Solar System and its dynamics, as well as deepen people’s knowledge about the origin of the universe, and how planets formed. 

Nonetheless, Bernardinelli faces the challenge in his research of balancing work and life. He is concerned about finding the next discovery in astronomy as a race, the tension between speed and quality. He indicates that numerous unexplored objects need to be analyzed through data points for new insights.

“Since everyone has access to the data, it is possible for other people to get the new finding of the next big thing and do the characterization about it,” Bernardinelli said. “It is a tradeoff between doing things fast and doing things well.”

With significant contributions in the past and the opportunity to explore the universe at the Rubin Observatory, Bernardinelli is looking forward to the next phase of analyzing the trans-Neptunian objects through the LSST project. 

“I went from this small Brazilian project to the big U.S. project to this big worldwide project. So this will be fun,” he said. “I’m very excited for the LSST to start. What surprises await us, what sort of weird, wacky object in the Solar System we’re going to find with the LSST.”