On a dark mountaintop in Chile, the world’s largest digital camera has started filming its masterpiece.
This Tuesday (June 30) with scientists Vera C. Rubin Observatory announced that the facility’s ambitious Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) has officially begun. Every night for the next 10 years, the observatory’s car-sized LSST Camera It will capture a 3,200-megapixel image of the southern sky — then another, then another, slowly filling in the mosaic of the universe for 30 seconds at a time.
“In a way, we are taking a digital color motion picture of the universe,” tony tysonProfessor of Cosmology at the University of California Davis and chief scientist of the LSST and former founding director of the Rubin Observatory, told Live Science.
Moving across the sky intermittently, the survey is expected to spot 7 million and 8 million changes Every night among the stars – from blazing supernovae and shining comets to colliding galaxies and dim, falling asteroids. Within minutes of each display, alerts of any specific changes will be publicly available for astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world to study.
“Rubin is an automated facility, so scientists don’t come here to use it,” Tyson said. “But tens trillions of observations There is enough data in the world for everyone.”
Tyson hopes the fire of data will uncover the invisible 95% of the universe that is made up of dark matter and dark energy.
while there are still some technical bugs need to be fixed – and the looming threat of ultra-bright corporate satellite He said Tyson and his colleagues are ready to begin the survey over the next few months “gradually increasing our sky area and image quality.”
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Live Science talked to Tyson about the LSST and what it might hold in the coming years.
Brandon Spector: You’re about to spend 10 years observing the southern sky with the largest digital camera ever built. What would a typical survey night look like?
Tony Tyson: In a way, we are creating a digital color movie of the universe. We’ll take thousands of 30-second exposures every night. Within two minutes of the shutter closing on the exposure, we will process all the data, [compare] It’s from the archival sky of that piece of sky, and – if something explodes, or bounces, or moves across the sky in a way that we don’t understand – issue an alert. Alerts go out worldwide.
I had already decided to make the data available to everyone. Alerts will also go to eight data brokers who specialize in things like cosmology, supernovae, etc., and the public can sign up for feeds from their favorite brokers.
BS: Which feed will you watch most closely?
TT: My most interesting data broker is the one that will come with a classification of “unknown”. I’m more interested in the unknown, unclassified things going on in the universe. But the catalog is a kind of live stream of information that will be available to people – and we’re excited to document many of the new discoveries.
My hope at this point is that we’ll discover something unexpected that will revolutionize astronomy. I think it’s more than a hope, I think it’s a guarantee.
Tony Tyson is an astronomer at the University of California, Davis and the founding director of the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
(Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/G. Watry)
BS: What kind of revolution would that be? Is there one big question you hope Rubin answers?
TT: I’m a cosmologist, so my hope is that we’ll get closer to understanding the physics of dark energy and dark matter.
But to be honest, I think 100 years from now we’ll be remembered for something other than this. And finding something completely new in the time zone, something that boggles our mind, that we didn’t expect – some kind of new object that exists there. Examples exist in radio astronomy FRB [fast radio bursts]For example. And I think that’s how we’ll be remembered.
My hope at this point is that we’ll discover something unexpected that will revolutionize astronomy.
Tony Tyson, LSST Chief Scientist
BS: The Rubin Observatory observes in optical light. Are there any strange optical phenomena you’ve got your eye on?
TT: In fact, there is already a very strong signal that there is a population of very weakly exploding objects that simply run out. The ones we know about are generally very bright – supernovae, which last a long time, and gamma-ray bursts, which are bright but they don’t last very long. But there is a big question mark in this unique area that we are going to explore, which is nebulous things that are very short-lived. And now a team in Japan has evidence that there is a population of very faint things that explode only once in a while. They do not repeat. And so I’m keeping my eye on him.
Rubin’s first images revealed a small portion of the Virgo group. The first images, released in June 2025, capture more than 10 million galaxies.
(Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)
BS: What are the main science goals of the Rubin Observatory?
TT: There are so many areas of science that we can focus on – and that was really the main selling point for us with agencies. For one, we’ll look at cosmology and the history of the expansion of the universe. That alone, we will have enough data to measure key parameters in cosmology to debunk models of dark matter and dark energy, which is exciting.
Another area is looking at new types of stars in our galaxy, so we can look at the history of our galaxy and the history of star formation in our galaxy. At even lower redshifts, an interesting area is looking at both comets and potentially Earth-threatening asteroids. Every night we detect about a thousand new asteroids.
And if we can get rid of the interfering low-Earth-orbiting satellites that virtually make it impossible, we’ll be able to specifically look for them. And so unfortunately I’ve started worrying about it a lot more in recent years.
BS: Are you talking about companies like Reflect Orbital, which essentially want to put giant mirrors in low Earth orbit? We wrote about how satellites are like this Can completely compromise LSST.
Yes. There is a proposed class of extremely ultra-bright satellites to be launched that is completely inconsistent with LSST science. The sky will no longer be dark anywhere, for anyone.
Reflected Orbital is an example of this. Another example is this orbiting AI [artificial intelligence] Computational centres, which will be extremely bright. We have met all these companies. They say they feel our pain, but their board of directors or their investors say they’re going to move on.
I am working with spacexAlthough. They’re trying really hard to eliminate some of these effects, but nothing is perfect. It’s going to be difficult.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is located on a mountain top under the famous dark skies in Chile. Its view of the universe would be unmatched, if shiny corporate satellites didn’t ruin the view.
(Image credit: Hernan Stockbrand)
BS: So if these companies are moving, what are you going to do?
What I’m trying to do is work closely with Congress and the American Astronomical Society and other bodies – the United Nations, the FCC. [Federal Communications Commission] – To see what we can do.
I am naturally optimistic. I think Reflect Orbital is a failing business model, but they’re going to try to do it anyway. So they will keep a lot of junk there for some time.
BS: I really wish you good luck with this. But since you’re an optimist, let’s end on something positive. You have supported this observatory for more than 20 years – first as its founding Director and now as its Chief Scientist. How does it feel now that LSST is finally live?
After so much time, finding something that actually works is quite gratifying. This is an extremely complex system, and there is no system more complex than this that works perfectly all the time.
I was the original founding director, I’m now the chief scientist, and it’s my day job to worry about what’s going wrong with it. And there’s a long list of things we’re concerned about. But it’s working, and it’s working quite well. And so it’s quite gratifying.
Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity