Multicolor Characterization of Optically Invisible FU Orionis-type Outbursts: Demonstration and Prospects for the WINTER Survey

WINTER’s construction is made possible by the National Science Foundation under MRI grant No. AST-1828470 with early operations supported by AST-1828470 and early science supported by AST-2206731 and AST-2206730. Significant support for WINTER also comes from the California Institute of Technology, the Caltech Optical Observatories, the Bruno Rossi Fund of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and the MIT Department of Physics and School of Science. D.F.’s contribution to this material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. AST-2401779. This research award is partially funded by a generous gift of Charles Simonyi to the NSF Division of Astronomical Sciences. The award is made in recognition of significant contributions to Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Furthermore, we acknowledge the support of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration through ADAP grant No. 80NSSC24K0663. This work is based on observations obtained at the Infrared Telescope Facility, which is operated by the University of Hawai‘i under contract 80HQTR19D0030 with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. We acknowledge ESA Gaia, DPAC and the Photometric Science Alerts Team (http://gsaweb.ast.cam.ac.uk/alerts). This research made use of hips2fits,¹³ a service provided by CDS. Any use of generative AI in this manuscript adheres to ethical guidelines for use and acknowledgment of generative AI in academic research. Each author has made a substantial contribution to the work, which has been thoroughly vetted for accuracy, and assumes responsibility for the integrity of their contributions.