Overview

• The observatory’s 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope is equipped with a 3.2-gigapixel camera and six optical to near-infrared filters, delivering unmatched sensitivity and field of view.
• In just over ten hours of June test observations, Rubin captured detailed views of the Lagoon and Trifid nebulae, millions of galaxies in the Virgo Cluster and thousands of asteroids.
• Three international data access centers, including a hub at the University of Southampton, have come online to distribute roughly 20 terabytes of nightly observations to researchers and citizen scientists.
• A real-time alert system has been activated to flag transient events and moving objects, bolstering research into supernovae and supporting planetary defense efforts.
• When full Legacy Survey of Space and Time operations begin later this year, the facility will scan the entire southern sky every few nights for a decade, cataloguing 20 billion galaxies to probe dark matter and dark energy.