Twilight Discovery of near-Sun Asteroids and Naked-eye Comets at Palomar Observatory
While the majority of solar system objects discovered by wide field surveys are ordinary, they also provide the opportunity to discover hidden gems such as interstellar objects, near-Sun asteroids, and bright comets. These provide opportunities to characterize extrasolar planetesimals, search for new sources of asteroids in the inner solar system, and study the composition of the protoplanetary disk. I will describe survey techniques used to discover these hidden gems in observations of the near-Sun sky during twilight in current and next-generation surveys, such as the Zwicky Transient Facility and the Rubin Observatory. I will describe three examples of twilight solar system results: 1.) the discovery and follow-up observations of (594913) 'Ayló'chaxnim, the first known asteroid possessing an aphelion entirely within the orbit of Venus, 2.) the recovery of interstellar comet 2I/Borisov, and 3.) the discovery of naked-eye comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF). I will discuss the behind-the-scenes work of using machine learning in these results and their implications for the formation of the solar system and the composition of extrasolar and solar system planetesimals.