The greatest movie ever filmed may not have actors, but the entire universe serves as its cast.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, and the Milky Way.
(Image credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/B.
Quint)At the center of the effort is the world's largest digital camera, a 3,200-megapixel instrument built to capture a new detailed image about every 40 seconds.
This map shows a representative week of Rubin Observatory observations for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
The greatest movie ever filmed may not have actors, but the entire universe serves as its cast.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has officially begun its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, a mission designed to create the most detailed time-lapse record of the cosmos ever made, according to SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The observatory is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science.
From its mountaintop perch beneath Chile's dark sky, the observatory will repeatedly scan the southern sky every few nights, capturing changes across space on a scale never before attempted. Scientists say the 10-year project will allow them to watch the universe evolve in near real time, from exploding stars to objects moving through the solar system.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, and the Milky Way. (Image credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/B. Quint)
At the center of the effort is the world's largest digital camera, a 3,200-megapixel instrument built to capture a new detailed image about every 40 seconds. Over the next decade, Rubin Observatory is expected to return to each section of the sky about 800 times, building a record of billions of objects.
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The images will help astronomers track fast-changing events, including supernova explosions, pulsating stars, active black holes and other brief cosmic flashes. The observatory is also expected to become one of the most powerful tools ever built for finding objects in the solar system, including millions of asteroids and comets.
This map shows a representative week of Rubin Observatory observations for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. The color of the tile represents the filter used for each exposure (u, g, r, i, z, and y). (Image Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA)
During early testing surveys, Rubin discovered more than 11,000 previously unknown asteroids in about a month and a half, including 33 near-Earth objects and 380 trans-Neptunian objects, according to SLAC.
"It's taken 20 years of hard science, engineering and more to get to the point where we can call 'action' as we start rolling on this blockbuster movie of the universe," said Phil Marshall, deputy director of Rubin Operations for SLAC. "Millions of alerts in just the last couple of months show that Rubin is up and running as a discovery machine. Now we're putting it all together."
The mission could also help researchers investigate some of the universe's biggest mysteries, including dark matter and dark energy. By measuring how galaxies are distributed and how the universe has expanded over time, scientists hope Rubin's data will provide new clues about forces and phenomena that cannot be directly seen.
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Rubin Observatory is expected to collect about 10 terabytes of data each night and produce as many as 7 million alerts about changes in the night sky, according to SLAC. Those alerts will be routed to automated systems that help scientists quickly identify and follow up on unusual events.
When the survey is complete, the final dataset is expected to contain billions of objects and trillions of measurements. Researchers say the result will serve as a moving record of the sky.
