Overview
- The Vera C. Rubin Observatory officially started the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which began June 30, 2026, launching a decade of continuous imaging of the southern sky.
- Rubin’s 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope uses a 3,200-megapixel camera to take a new image about every 40 seconds and will revisit the survey footprint roughly 800 times over ten years.
- The observatory will produce about 10 terabytes of data per night and up to roughly 7 million automated alerts nightly, sending real-time notices when objects move, brighten, dim, or otherwise change.
- Early operations already yielded fast science: in its first six weeks Rubin cataloged more than 11,000 previously unknown asteroids, including dozens of near-Earth objects and hundreds of trans‑Neptunian bodies.
- All survey data and alerts will be publicly available, creating an open dataset of trillions of measurements that will enable global follow-up efforts but also require new tools and coordination to manage the data and prioritize transient and solar‑system targets.