Rubin Observatory Begins Decade-Long Universe Survey
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has officially launched its Legacy Survey of Space and Time after a year of testing and calibration, with US National Science Foundation's Brian Stone calling it "filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made."
- The survey will collect about 10 terabytes of data every night over the next 10 years, with each high-resolution image covering an area roughly 40 times the size of the full moon across nearly the entire southern-hemisphere sky.
- Rubin's alert system has already fired millions of times in the past few months, according to Stanford's Phil Marshall, and has already yielded discoveries of more than 11,000 new asteroids.
- Astronomers expect the decade-long dataset to produce the most complete inventory of solar system objects ever assembled while also mapping the Milky Way in detail.
- The repeated deep images are designed to capture rare cosmic events and provide new insight into dark matter, dark energy, and the expansion of the universe.
Why it matters: For planetary scientists, the survey is already delivering results — more than 11,000 new asteroids discovered in early alerts, on track to become the most complete solar system inventory ever. Over 10 years, the 10-terabyte-per-night dataset will give researchers an unprecedented window onto dark matter, dark energy, and cosmic expansion, reshaping nearly every branch of observational astronomy.
