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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will discover billions of dynamic objects while building up a deep map of the universe
~spacerubin observatoryastronomytelescopes
www.science.org Jun 20, 2025Tildes

Summary

From the article:

By comparing each new image in that movie with what has come before, Rubin will detect everything that has moved, changed brightness, or suddenly appeared. Within 1 minute of dispatching an image, Rubin’s processing center at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California will generate alerts for each new “transient”—as many as 10 million every night.

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Rubin won’t ignore objects that persist through time. By repeatedly “stacking” images as the 10-year survey progresses, it will slowly build up the deepest and most detailed map ever made of the cosmos, including billions of galaxies […]

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The vast archive, growing by 20 terabytes each night, will after 1 year contain more optical astronomy data than that produced by all previous telescopes combined.

This epic survey is scheduled to begin in about 6 months. In the meantime, Rubin staff are practicing the steps needed to produce images all night, every night for the next 10 years. The first test images will be revealed to the public on 23 June.

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Around the world, researchers have spent years developing machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to cope with the coming flood of new objects. Scores of other telescopes, some of them completely robotic, are ready to zoom in and monitor the new transients to see what they are and how they evolve.