LSST: Vera C. Rubin observatory

LSST First light image
This annotated First Look image of the Virgo Cluster was captured by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. From sizable stars to sprawling galaxies, Rubin transforms seemingly empty pockets of space into glittering tapestries.

🌌 The Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a brand-new astronomical facility located on Cerro Pachón in northern Chile 🇨🇱.
It was built to carry out one of the most ambitious projects in modern astronomy: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST.

🎯 Its goal: to map the entire southern sky for ten years, observing billions of stars and galaxies, as well as all phenomena that change over time — supernovae 💥, asteroids ☄️, stellar explosions 🌠, and possibly even completely new cosmic events 👀.

🔭 A telescope like no other

Rubin has an 8.4-meter mirror and a 3.2-gigapixel camera — the largest ever built 📸.
Each exposure covers a sky area so wide that it would take over 40 full moons 🌕 to fill it!
Observations are made in six photometric bands (u, g, r, i, z, y), from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared 🌈.

Thanks to its large mirror, wide field, and fast cadence, Rubin will scan the entire southern sky roughly every three nights ⏱️.
This means thousands of images per night, totaling nearly 60 petabytes of data 💾 over ten years — a true Big Data challenge in astronomy 🚀.

🌠 What will Rubin discover?

The LSST survey is designed to answer four big questions in modern astrophysics:

  1. 🧭 Dark energy and dark matter
    By measuring how galaxies are distributed and how the universe expands, Rubin will help us understand the mysterious dark energy driving cosmic acceleration.

  2. 🪐 Inventory of the Solar System
    The telescope will detect millions of asteroids and trans-Neptunian objects, including those near Earth.

  3. 🌌 Our Galaxy, the Milky Way
    Rubin will map stars across the Milky Way to trace its history and evolution.

  4. 💫 The dynamic sky
    With its fast observing cadence, Rubin will detect transient events every night: supernovae, active galactic nuclei, flashes of light, and other rare cosmic phenomena.

🛠️ Current status

Since 2024, Rubin has been in its commissioning phase, testing the telescope, camera, and software.
In 2025, it captured its first real images of the sky 🌌, confirming the exceptional quality of its instruments.
Teams are now performing photometric calibration and scientific validation before the full survey begins.

The start of regular scientific observations is expected in the coming years, following a pilot phase for validation.

🌍 A new era for astronomy

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will transform the way we observe the universe.
It will produce a complete movie of the changing cosmos 🎥, where every star, galaxy, and supernova is tracked over ten years.
All data will be accessible to the global scientific community 🌐, providing an amazing opportunity for students, engineers, and researchers interested in data science, artificial intelligence, cosmology, time-domain astrophysics, and planetary science.

✨ Rubin is the observatory of the future — and its story is just beginning.