NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory

@vrubinobs.bsky.social

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Get ready for a new era in astronomy and astrophysics with Rubin Observatory! Para español siga a Instagram: http://instagram.com/rubin_observatory

A small wildcat with dark spots and stripes walks among gray rocks and dry vegetation in a sunlit natural habitat.
Group of visitors posing in front of the colorful mosaic wall at Kitt Peak National Observatory Visitor Center.
A composite graphic titled "Rubin's COSMOS Field" features a dense central starfield marked with ten white boxes, surrounded by ten corresponding zoomed-in panels. The central view shows a sandy scatter of distant stars and faint smudges. The numbered outer panels highlight diverse galaxy structures: bright coiled spirals, smooth golden ellipticals glowing like polished stones, and distorted merging pairs with wispy, thread-like tails of stars.
Observatory silhouette atop a mountain against a vibrant orange sunset sky with flattened sun to the right. Credit: NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/H. Stockebrand
Large group of people wearing matching blue-purple shirts gathered outdoors on a sunny lawn surrounded by trees for a group photo.
A scale diagram of the Rubin Observatory LSSTCam field of view. A large white circle filled with a grid of small square tiles contains a wide starfield photo across its center. Inside the photo, small nested wireframe boxes show the vastly smaller views of the Webb, Chandra, Hubble, and Spitzer telescopes. In the bottom-right corner, a full Moon image looks tiny next to the giant circle, illustrating how Rubin's camera covers an area far larger than the Moon.
A dense field of countless pinpoint stars fills the frame against the deep black of space, creating a fine, grainy texture like fine sand spread across a smooth table. Dozens of particularly bright stars in blue, yellow, and orange glitter across the scene like jewels. Wispy, grayish clouds of galactic dust drift across the center and right sides of the image, appearing soft and powder-like against the dark background. Scattered throughout the entire scene are stars and faint objects in shades of blue, yellow, and red. Some appear as sharp, solid points, while others are soft, diffuse smudges. Zooming in reveals that many of these tiny, faint smudges scattered between the stars are actually distant galaxies, varying from smooth, pebble-like blobs to faint, stretched lines.
Workers in bright orange safety gear with a white pickup truck and a bulldozer clearing snow on a muddy mountain road. Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Illustration of a boot-shaped observatory against a dark blue background. Bilingual text reads "Severe Storms Impacting Rubin Operations in Chile: 30 July 2026 update. Sistema frontal impactó las operaciones de Rubin en Chile: Actualización del 30 de julio de 2026."
Two bright stars with colorful four-pointed diffraction spikes in red, green, and blue in a pinwheel pattern against a backdrop of distant galaxies and stars .
Banner for the Rubin Community Workshop displayed outdoors with trees and a building in the background.
The bright cores of four interacting galaxies surrounded by some distant stars in a dark sky. The background is mostly black with few distinguishable features. Text reads "Digitized Sky Survey II, 1994. ~21 mag (~foreground sky)"
Five-panel image showing the progressive evolution of sky surveys from 1994 to 2025, revealing more and more detail in a triple merging galaxy system and the surrounding sky.
Two people collaborate on a laptop displaying an Rubin online education investigation during a group workshop in a conference room.
A composite image showing Dr. Vera Rubin in grayscale standing at a large telescope, with Rubin Observatory in teal in the background atop its rocky summit site.
Low-angle view of a large observatory dome with louvered panels beneath a clear, starry sky. The Milky Way's bright core and wispy dust lanes arc diagonally overhead. Credit: NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/H. Stockebrand
Comet 3I/ATLAS colored blue, with a bright rounded coma at upper right and a broad, faint blue tail sweeping diagonally left across a field dotted with stars and faint galaxies. Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/C. Chandler
Panoramic sunset over rugged mountain landscape. A winding road recedes under orange‑pink clouds, and a large boot-shaped white telescope building stands at right beside a metal guardrail.
A small spotted wildcat blending into rocky terrain and dry shrubs.
Panoramic sunset view of a boot-shaped observatory with open dome on a rocky ridge. Golden light highlights the tops of the rolling mountain peaks beneath a deep blue sky thats fades to orange at the horizon.
The Virgo cluster of galaxies as captured by Rubin Observatory: a few large and smooth galaxies like yellow polished stones with countless smaller galaxies and stars of varying sizes, shapes, and colors sprinkled throughout. Text labels note dozens of objects of interest. Text reads: “The Rubin era: big-data astronomy surveys,” with Spanish translation.
Large yellow instrument mounted under a white observatory telescope in a control room. Two women operate the telescope nearby. Text reads: “The digital revolution: CCDs and computers,” in English and Spanish.
Split image: left, John Herschel’s 1847 drawing of the Orion Nebula; right, starry sky over the boot-shaped Rubin Observatory under a night sky. Text reads: “How it started vs. how it’s going: astronomy over the centuries.”
Dense star field with bright red, white, and blue, stars scattered across a dark cosmic background. Three particularly bright stars appear arranged in a flattened triangle at center - the left star is white, the top one is red, and the right one is blue.
Overhead group photo of hundreds in teal shirts in a lobby. Bilingual text in English and Spanish reads: “9. It’s a community‑built survey. Thousands of scientists worldwide helped shape LSST, ensuring the data can be used to study the Solar System, distant galaxies, and everything in between.”
Computer server racks lit with pink and blue LEDs. Bilingual text in English and Spanish reads: “5. It will produce massive amounts of data. LSST will generate ~10 TB per night and ~30 PB of raw images over 10 years.
Milky Way seen through the open dome of a large telescope at night. Bilingual text in English and Spanish reads “1. It’s a 10‑year survey. LSST is a decade-long effort to address some big astronomy questions about dark matter and dark energy, the Solar System, the Milky Way, and the changing sky."
Silhouette of Rubin Observatory under the Milky Way. A circular inset shows teal hexagonal tiles covering part of the Milky Way. Text reads “The Legacy Survey of Space and Time is NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory's mission to map the changing sky. Here are 10 things to know about it!” with a Swipe/Desliza arrow.
A wide, panoramic view of a dense field of countless tiny, pinpoint stars filling the entire frame like fine dust. Wispy, faint, grayish-brown clouds of galactic cirrus drift across the scene, creating a subtle, patchy texture over the dark background. Several brighter, prominent stars stand out across the field, most notably a large, brilliant blue star on the upper right surrounded by a soft glowing halo, along with a few other scattered bright blue and warm orange stars.
A close-up view of a dense star field centered on a bright, face-on spiral galaxy with a glowing yellowish-white core and delicate, swirling arms. The surrounding dark sky is crowded with hundreds of pinpoint stars in shades of warm orange and bright white. A brilliant blue star with faint diffraction spikes shines prominently near the top center.
A wide, panoramic view of a dense field of countless tiny, pinpoint stars filling the entire frame like fine dust. Wispy, faint, grayish-brown clouds of galactic cirrus drift across the scene, creating a subtle, patchy texture over the dark background. Several brighter, prominent stars stand out across the field, most notably a large, brilliant blue star on the upper right surrounded by a soft glowing halo, along with a few other scattered bright blue and warm orange stars.
A wide, panoramic view of a dense field of countless tiny, pinpoint stars filling the entire frame like fine dust. Faint, grayish clouds of interstellar dust called galactic cirrus drift like wisps of cotton candy across the scene, creating a subtle, patchy texture over the dark background. Several brighter, prominent stars stand out across the field, most notably a large, brilliant blue star on the upper right surrounded by a soft glowing halo, along with a few other scattered bright blue and warm orange stars.
A circular sky map against a black background showing a dense field of stars and the glowing, dusty diagonal band of the Milky Way galaxy. Overlaid on the sky are hundreds of overlapping, colorful hexagonal tiles clustered across the central and outer regions of the view. The tiles form a sprawling, interconnected network color-coded in vibrant shades of green, yellow, orange, red, and teal. A few distinct, thick white circles are scattered within the colorful tile patterns, highlighting areas imaged much more frequently.
View from below of Rubin's enormous cylindrical LSST Camera with lens cap off. The camera is installed in the telescope between the secondary and combined primary/tertiary mirror, and multiple reflections of the instruments are visible.
Infographic of Rubin Observatory LSST totals: 10-year survey; >2M images in 6 filters; ~30 PB raw images; ~20B changes detected; cosmic inventory ~20B galaxies, ~17B stars, ~6M Solar System objects.
Low-angle view of an angular silver observatory dome with open vents under a clear, star-filled sky and the faint band of the Milky Way.
Three-panel zoom into the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae of the Milky Way’s core. Left: wide Rubin view of both the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae. Lagoon is a glowing pink lima-bean shape stood on end at right, while Trifid is a glowing pink-and-blue cotton ball at upper left. Middle: closer view of the rosy gas and dust of the Trifid Nebula. Right: Hubble’s close-up of a small section of the Trifid Nebula showing dark, backlit dust pillars with bright edges and stars scattered throughout.
Looking up at a large observatory dome from below with under a star-filled sky and the Milky Way arcing diagonally overhead.
Sunset over layered mountain ridges with an observatory on the left ridge as warm orange fades to pale blue.
Infographic titled “One Observatory – Boundless Discoveries” for the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, showing and illustrated observatory surrounded by its four science areas: Milky Way structure & formation, Solar System census, the changing sky, and dark matter & dark energy.
Silhouette of a large observatory building at night, with the bright and dusty band of the Milky Way arcing diagonally up across a star-filled sky.
Horizontal infographic on Rubin Observatory’s LSST: 10-year southern-sky survey (~800 visits) to study dark matter/energy, the Solar System, the Milky Way, and the changing sky. Rubin's 3200-megapixel camera and 8.4-m telescope will collect ~700 images of each region of sky over ten years, generating ~10 terabytes of data and up to ~7M alerts per night.
Aerial view of a mountaintop observatory at sunrise, its dome open to reveal a large telescope; a white facility on a rocky ridge with winding roads, scattered equipment, and rolling sunlit mountains in the distance.
View inside a large observatory dome at night. A giant teal telescope and metal beams are lit by red safety lights under the open dome slit with night sky visible. A few people in hard hats stand at lower right.
An ominous blue donut-shaped ring glows ominously in the dark to the right. To the left, Rubin's large steel telescope mount structure is barely visible, softly illuminated by the blue glow.
An ominous blue donut-shaped ring surrounded by a thin red ring glows ominously in the dark to the left. To the right, Rubin's large steel telescope mount structure is barely visible, softly illuminated by the glow.
Panel four of four of a panoramic view from Cerro Pachón's rocky summit: traditional cylindrical telescope building under a starry night sky.
Panel three of four of a panoramic view from Cerro Pachón's rocky summit: a tall spindly tower topped with a small dome under a starry night sky.
Panel two of four of a panoramic view from Cerro Pachón's rocky summit: a boot-shaped observatory building next to a red antenna beneath the Milky Way arching over a star-filled sky.
Panel one of four of a panoramic view from Cerro Pachón rocky summit: a metal storage container under the two ghostly smudges of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.
Panoramic night view of a mountaintop observatory site. From left to right we see: a metal storage container under the two ghostly smudges of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds, a boot-shaped observatory building next to a red antenna beneath the Milky Way arching over a star-filled sky, a tall spindly tower topped with a small dome, and a larger traditional cylindrical telescope building.