Vera C. Rubin Observatory facts for kids
Rendering of completed LSST
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| Alternative names | Large Synoptic Survey Telescope |
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| Named after | Vera Rubin |
| Location(s) | Elqui Province, Coquimbo Region, Chile |
| Coordinates | 30°14′40.7″S 70°44′57.9″W / 30.244639°S 70.749417°W |
| Observatory code | X05 |
| Altitude | 2,672.75 m (8,768.9 ft) |
| Wavelength | 320 nm (940 THz)–1,060 nm (280 THz) |
| Diameter | 8.417 m (27 ft 7.4 in) |
| Secondary diameter | 3.420 m (11 ft 2.6 in) |
| Tertiary diameter | 5.016 m (16 ft 5.5 in) |
| Angular resolution | 0.7 median seeing limit 0.2 pixel size |
| Collecting area | 35 m2 (380 sq ft) |
| Focal length | 10.31 m (f/1.23) overall 9.9175 m (f/1.186) primary |
| Website | rubinobservatory |
 Location of Vera C. Rubin Observatory
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a special place in Chile where scientists study space. It used to be called the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Its main job is to take pictures of the entire southern sky every few nights. This will create a "time-lapse movie" of the universe, called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (also known as LSST).
The observatory sits on top of a mountain called Cerro Pachón in northern Chile. This mountain is about 2,682 meters (8,768 feet) high. It is next to other telescopes like Gemini South. The main building for the observatory is in the city of La Serena, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) away.
The observatory is named after Vera Rubin, a famous American astronomer. She made important discoveries about how galaxies spin. The Rubin Observatory is a big project supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy. It is run by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
Inside, there's a huge telescope called the Simonyi Survey Telescope. It has an 8.4-meter (27-foot) wide mirror. This telescope can photograph the whole sky in just a few nights. It uses a special mirror system to take very clear pictures across a wide area of the sky. It uses the largest digital camera ever built, a 3.2-gigapixel camera, to capture these images.
The idea for this observatory started in 2001. Building the main mirror began in 2007. In 2010, it was chosen as the most important ground-based astronomy project. Official construction started on August 1, 2014. Building it cost around $680 million. The telescope took its very first pictures on October 24, 2024. The first official images from the full system were shared on June 23, 2025. It plans to start working fully later in 2025. All the information it gathers will be available to everyone after two years.
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Naming the Observatory
The telescope was first called the "Large Synoptic Survey Telescope." The word synoptic means "seeing things together" or "getting a broad view." This name described how the telescope would quickly scan large parts of the sky.
In 2019, the observatory was renamed the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. This was done to honor Vera Rubin. She was an amazing astronomer who helped us understand dark matter. She did this by mapping and cataloging billions of galaxies over time.
The telescope itself is named the Simonyi Survey Telescope. This name honors private donors Charles and Lisa Simonyi.
The old name, LSST, is still used for the survey the observatory will do. It's now called the "Legacy Survey of Space and Time." The camera is also called the "LSST Camera."
History of the Project
The Rubin Observatory builds on a long history of sky surveys. These started with hand-drawn maps and later used photographic plates. Around 2000, digital surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey began.
The idea for the Rubin Observatory started in 1996. In 2001, a report suggested building a large telescope to survey the sky. Its main goals were clear: to find near-Earth objects, study the Kuiper belt, observe supernovae, and map dark matter.
Early funding came from private donors like Charles and Lisa Simonyi, and Bill Gates. The United States Department of Energy helped pay for the huge digital camera. Official construction began in 2014.
In 2025, the telescope took its first images with the full camera. These included beautiful pictures of the Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula. It also captured a wide view of many galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. These early images even showed over 2,000 new asteroids.
How the Telescope Works
The Simonyi Survey Telescope is special because it has a very wide view of the sky. It can see an area 3.5 degrees wide. To compare, both the Sun and the Moon look about 0.5 degrees wide from Earth. This wide view, combined with its large mirror, lets it collect a lot of light very quickly. It can see a much larger area of the sky at once than most other big telescopes.
Mirrors and Lenses
The Rubin Observatory uses three special mirrors to take very sharp pictures across its wide field of view. The main mirror is 8.4 meters (27 feet) wide. The second is 3.4 meters (11 feet) wide, and the third is 5.0 meters (16 feet) wide. The main and third mirrors are made from a single piece of glass. This makes the telescope stronger and helps it move quickly.
It also uses three large lenses, one of which is 1.55 meters (5 feet) wide. An "active optics" system uses sensors to keep the mirrors perfectly shaped and in focus for clear pictures.
The Giant Camera
The observatory has a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera. This camera takes 30-second pictures and is the largest digital camera ever made! It needs to be very precise because the telescope moves and takes pictures so quickly.
The camera's main part is a flat area 64 centimeters (25 inches) across. It has 189 CCD detectors, which are like super-powerful sensors. They are cooled to about -100 degrees Celsius (-148 degrees Fahrenheit) to reduce electronic "noise." The camera also has six different color filters to see objects in different types of light.
Handling the Data
The camera will take over 200,000 pictures each year, creating a huge amount of data. It's far too much for people to look at one by one. So, managing and understanding all this information is a big challenge. The project needs powerful computers and a lot of storage space.
The images are processed in three ways:
- Quick Alerts: Within 60 seconds, the system looks for anything new or changed, like a star getting brighter or an object moving. Up to 10 million alerts are sent out every night and shared with astronomers right away. To protect sensitive information, some data is processed at a special government facility. This ensures that certain details, like the location of secret satellites, are not accidentally shared. The scientific data is then released to the public very quickly.
- Daily Products: Within 24 hours, all images from that night are processed, finding and measuring objects.
- Annual Releases: Once a year, all data is re-processed to create a huge catalog of objects, including billions of galaxies and stars.
The Rubin Observatory also lets scientists use its computers to run their own special programs on the data.
What We Will Learn
The Rubin Observatory will survey about 18,000 square degrees of the southern sky. It will visit each spot about 825 times. This will help scientists learn many new things:
- Dark Energy and Dark Matter: It will help us understand dark energy and dark matter. These are mysterious parts of our universe. It will do this by studying how gravity bends light and by looking at exploding stars called supernovae.
- Solar System Objects: It will map out many small objects in our solar system. This includes near-Earth asteroids and objects in the Kuiper belt. The observatory is expected to find 10 to 100 times more objects than we know now. It might even help find the hypothesized Planet Nine.
- Changing Sky Events: It will detect sudden events in space. These include novae (newly bright stars), supernovae, and gamma-ray bursts. It will send out quick alerts so other telescopes can study them.
- Mapping the Milky Way: It will create a detailed map of our own Milky Way galaxy.
The Rubin Observatory is also expected to be very good at finding light from gravitational wave events. These are ripples in space-time detected by other observatories like LIGO.
Scientists also hope that the huge amount of data will lead to many unexpected discoveries.
The U.S. Congress has asked NASA to find and catalog 90% of large near-Earth objects. The Rubin Observatory alone is expected to find 62% of them.
The Rubin Observatory also has a program for Education and Public Outreach (EPO). This program will help teach the public, teachers, and citizen scientists about astronomy. It will work with Zooniverse on citizen science projects.
Other Sky Surveys
Many other telescopes have surveyed the sky. Here are some of them:
- Harvard Plate Stacks: Starting in the 1880s, Harvard used cameras to photograph the night sky. These old pictures are now being digitized.
- Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS): From 2000 to 2009, this survey mapped a large part of the northern sky.
- Pan-STARRS: Since 2010, this survey uses two telescopes in Hawaii. It was the best at finding near-Earth objects before the Rubin Observatory.
- Gaia: This space telescope (2014-2025) made extremely precise maps of billions of stars and other objects across the entire sky.
- Zwicky Transient Facility: Since 2018, this telescope also quickly scans the sky for sudden events. It helps test the Rubin Observatory's alert system.
Building the Observatory
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The Cerro Pachón site was chosen in 2006 for its clear skies. Construction began in 2011. The main mirror took seven years to make and arrived at the summit in Chile in 2019. The observatory building and its dome were mostly finished by 2019. The huge telescope mount was designed to move very fast, swinging to a new spot and settling in just four seconds. It was ready by 2019. The giant LSST Camera was finished in early 2024 and installed in March 2025.
Satellites in the Sky
When the telescope takes long pictures of the sky, satellites can cross its view. This leaves bright streaks on the images. Even if scientists try to remove these streaks, the affected parts of the image might not be useful for science. This problem became very clear when a group of Starlink satellites crossed an image from another observatory.
Companies like Starlink are launching thousands of satellites into low Earth orbit. There are plans for many more. This has raised concerns about how these satellites could affect astronomical images.
The Rubin Observatory has looked at ways to avoid satellite streaks. They found that if they changed their observing plan, they could reduce streaks. However, this would mean losing about 10% of their observing time. Studies show that even with many satellites, only a small part of the total image pixels would be lost.
Satellites in low Earth orbit often pass into Earth's shadow during the night. When they are in shadow, they are too dark to be seen by telescopes. So, only images taken during or shortly after twilight are expected to be affected by satellite streaks.
Gallery
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Clear skies at Cerro Pachón
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Vera C. Rubin Observatory under construction
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The telescope mount assembly inside the dome
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The focal plane of the Rubin Observatory Camera. It is 60 cm (2 feet) wide and takes 3200-megapixel images.
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Engineers with the r-band filter for the Rubin Observatory Camera
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The Rubin Observatory Camera being cooled to very low temperatures
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Comet Leonard, the Rubin Observatory, the planet Venus, and stars
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Night light around Vera C. Rubin Observatory
See Also
In Spanish: Observatorio Vera C. Rubin para niños
- List of largest optical reflecting telescopes
- Pan-STARRS
- Dark Energy Survey
- VISTA (Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy)
- VLT Survey Telescope
