I really like the Rubin because I think a lot of people focus too much on "deep" seeing (IE, looking at individual or several objects with very high magnification only once). The Rubin does much more "wide" seeing and this actually produces a ton of useful data- basically, enough data to collect reliable statistics about things. This helps refine cosmological models in ways that smaller individual observations cannot.
What's amazing to me is just how long it took to get to first photo- I was working on the design of the LSST scope well over 10 years ago, and the project had been underway for some time before that. It's hard to keep attention on projects for that long when a company can IPO and make billions in just a few years.
My feeling is the "deep" vs "wide" thing is a circumstance of which groups you interact with (and also which facilities you have access to, and even to some extent the culture of your science community). Rubin is an example of what you can do when you build something massive specifically for a single purpose, and as more of these kind of facilities come online (SDSS and Gaia have been around for a while, but DESI, 4MOST and other similar facilities are coming, and let's not forget radio), it's what we get out of the whole suite supporting each other that gets the best science.
The "wide" mode is called "survey" astronomy, and there have been several large surveys like Rubin/LSST, going all the way back to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which started in 2000 (if you count surveys from before the era of digital sensors, there are surveys going back more than 100 years).[0] Rubin/LSST is just the newest and most advanced large, ground-based optical survey.
Both modes of observation - surveys and targeted observations of individual objects - are necessary for astronomical research. Often, large surveys are used to scan the sky, and then targeted observations are used to follow up on the most interesting objects.
You worked on the design? That is interesting. I worked on the simulating the LSST , back in 2008 to 2010. The goal of which was to test the data reduction software. We were on the Image Simulation team.
It is surreal to see LSST/Rubin finally get first light.
Even more interesting to see who is still working on LSST, and who is not.
Deep is still interesting in understanding the origins of the universe. Rubin seems highly practical on the flip side. It'll be a super helpful tool in predicting asteroid impacts.
The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale.
Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is).
This is an interesting tidbit:
> Once images are taken, they are processed according to three different timescales, prompt (within 60 seconds), daily, and annually.
> The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself. This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out.
They are estimating 10 million alerts per night, which will be released publicly after the previously mentioned assessment takes place.
I'm the Rubin team member responsible for mapping the data into RGB images. I have been a long time reader of hacker news, but finally made an account to comment on this. I wanted to thank everyone here for their interest and taking their time to check out these images. Seeing everyone interested and engaged makes all the long hours worth it.
Back in January 2010 I went on a blind date with a lady who’s now my wife — an astrophysicist. We talked about this instrument and how Google would shuffle petabytes of raw observations, then distilling them into datasets researchers could actually use (don't know if Google is still involved?). We’ll celebrate 15 years of marriage this January, and I have been following the progress of this telescope since 2007 or so. It's amazing how long it takes for these instruments to come online, but the benefits are significant.
Here's the SDSS view[0] of this featured[1] section from the Virgo Cluster, in comparison, to put the staggering depth of these exposures in their proper context,
The amount of data this thing will be putting out every night is insane. For years now the community has been building the infrastructure to be able to efficiently consume it for useful science, but we still have work to do. Anyone interested in the problem of pipelining and distributing 10s of TB of data a night should check out the LSST and related GitHubs.
So stoked for this observatory to go online! One cool uses it'll excel at is taking "deltas" between images and detect moving stuff. Close asteroids is one obvious goal, but I'm more interested in the next Oumuamua / Borisov like objects that come in from interstellar space. It would be amazing to get early warnings about those, and be able to study them with other powerful telescopes we have now.
(For those who haven't noticed, you can just simply paste 186.66721+8.89072 or whichever target you're curious about in an astronomy database like Aladin[0], and there right-click on "What is this?")
They look like they're roughly in the same plane. Is it safe to assume they're roughly in the same plane, or could they be really distant along the line of sight? The similarity in size makes me think they are, but I don't have any reason to be confident in that judgment.
For anyone that hasn't clicked the link, it shows that in just a few days, the observatory has already found over 2000 new asteroids. That is indeed very impressive.
Why do the brighter objects have the four way cross artifact? My (apparently incorrect) understanding was that those types of artifacts were a result of support structures holding reflecting mirrors on a telescope. But this camera just has a "standard" glass lense with nothing obstructing the light path to the sensor.
Those diffraction spikes are caused by the four-vane spider structure supporting the secondary mirror in the telescope's optical path, not by the camera lenses themselves.
You are not wholly wrong! There is both a supporting structure for the mirror, AND a glass lens in front of the sensor to further flatten the incoming light.
The interesting thing about the spikes in our images is that they stay fixed in image plane coordinates, not sky coordinates. So as the night sky moves (earth rotates) the spikes rotate relative to the sky leading to a star burst pattern over multiple exposures.
Every set of deep field imagery reminds me that any point of light we see could be a star, a galaxy, or a cluster of galaxies. The universe is unimaginably vast.
For observatories like Rubin, is there a plan for keeping them open after the funding ends? Is it feasible for Chile to take over the project and keep it going?
On a practical note, what happens to a facility like this if one day it's just locked up? Will it degrade without routine maintenance, or will it still be operational in the event someone can put together funding?
There are already facilities like this (obviously not as new as Rubin) degrading due to funding, but this is because there's usually no better purpose for them. Space monitoring has been used in the past as a second life for facilities (outreach too), but ~1m class telescopes are good enough now that networks of them are better than a 40+ year old telescope. It's also worth noting bits can be reused: buildings gutted and repurposed, telescopes/instruments moved/sold on, etc.; but the real issue is having the staff to look after these places, and many older facilities are not always as amenable to automation as people might like (especially funding agencies).
Arecibo was about 60 years old for comparison when it collapsed, but there are lots of faculties that are effectively ships of Theseus, with new instruments coming in over time which refresh the faculty (and when that stops happening, then you get concerned).
It will continue with a new instrument after 10 years (spectroscopic) funding permitting. Tololo has been running since the 60s. In California, Lick has been running since the 1880s.
Related: When a Telescope Is a National-Security Risk [1];
TL;DR: VCRO is capable of imaging spy- and other classified US satellites. An automated filtering system (involves routing through some government processing facility) is in place to remove them from the freshly captured raw data used for the public transient phenomena alert service. 3 days later, unredacted data is made available (by then the elusive, variable-orbit assets are long gone.)
Even one zoom-in and I find something interesting.
What's that faint illuminated tendril extending from M61 (the large spiral galaxy at the bottom center of the image) upwards towards that red giant? It seems too straight and off-center to be an extension of the spiral arm.
EDIT: The supposed "Tidal tail" on M61 was evidently known from deep astrophotography, but only rarely detected & commented upon.
[+] [-] dekhn|9 months ago|reply
What's amazing to me is just how long it took to get to first photo- I was working on the design of the LSST scope well over 10 years ago, and the project had been underway for some time before that. It's hard to keep attention on projects for that long when a company can IPO and make billions in just a few years.
[+] [-] aragilar|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] grues-dinner|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] DiogenesKynikos|9 months ago|reply
Both modes of observation - surveys and targeted observations of individual objects - are necessary for astronomical research. Often, large surveys are used to scan the sky, and then targeted observations are used to follow up on the most interesting objects.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sloan_Digital_Sky_Survey
Note that "seeing" means something very specific in astronomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astronomical_seeing.
[+] [-] jpizagno|9 months ago|reply
It is surreal to see LSST/Rubin finally get first light.
Even more interesting to see who is still working on LSST, and who is not.
[+] [-] cogman10|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] prpl|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KurSix|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] krunck|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jstummbillig|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mrbluecoat|9 months ago|reply
Among many other uses: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h6QYjNjivDE
[+] [-] cogman10|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jcims|9 months ago|reply
(And amazing production of the actual video as well)
Pretty sure you can see some kind of masking for satellites in some of the frames of the asteroid videos.
[+] [-] m3kw9|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] KurSix|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] boznz|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jcims|9 months ago|reply
The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale.
Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is).
This is an interesting tidbit:
> Once images are taken, they are processed according to three different timescales, prompt (within 60 seconds), daily, and annually.
> The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself. This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out.
They are estimating 10 million alerts per night, which will be released publicly after the previously mentioned assessment takes place.
[+] [-] binarystargazer|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mjsweet|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] jcims|9 months ago|reply
Congrats!
[+] [-] perihelions|9 months ago|reply
[0] https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%205...
[1] https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-...
[+] [-] tominspace7|9 months ago|reply
https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS...
[+] [-] WD-42|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] NitpickLawyer|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] avmich|9 months ago|reply
Second this, but other areas are of great interest too. Kuiper Belt discoveries and surveys FTW!
[+] [-] -warren|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] perihelions|9 months ago|reply
(For those who haven't noticed, you can just simply paste 186.66721+8.89072 or whichever target you're curious about in an astronomy database like Aladin[0], and there right-click on "What is this?")
[0] https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%204...
[+] [-] jlarocco|9 months ago|reply
https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.2...
https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=185.46019+4.48014&fov=0.6...
https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=188.49629+8.40493&fov=1.3...
[+] [-] jcims|9 months ago|reply
https://skyviewer.app/explorer?target=187.69717+12.33897&fov...
[+] [-] japhyr|9 months ago|reply
They look like they're roughly in the same plane. Is it safe to assume they're roughly in the same plane, or could they be really distant along the line of sight? The similarity in size makes me think they are, but I don't have any reason to be confident in that judgment.
[+] [-] Helmut10001|9 months ago|reply
Incredible.
[+] [-] 0x0203|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ludsan|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] 0x0203|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] ethan_smith|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] binarystargazer|9 months ago|reply
The interesting thing about the spikes in our images is that they stay fixed in image plane coordinates, not sky coordinates. So as the night sky moves (earth rotates) the spikes rotate relative to the sky leading to a star burst pattern over multiple exposures.
[+] [-] frontfor|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] phsilva|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] kdamica|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] runako|9 months ago|reply
For observatories like Rubin, is there a plan for keeping them open after the funding ends? Is it feasible for Chile to take over the project and keep it going?
On a practical note, what happens to a facility like this if one day it's just locked up? Will it degrade without routine maintenance, or will it still be operational in the event someone can put together funding?
[+] [-] aragilar|9 months ago|reply
Arecibo was about 60 years old for comparison when it collapsed, but there are lots of faculties that are effectively ships of Theseus, with new instruments coming in over time which refresh the faculty (and when that stops happening, then you get concerned).
[+] [-] prpl|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] throw0101c|9 months ago|reply
* https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/hands-on-at-the-vera-c-rubi...
Not super technical, but a little higher level (with decent analogies to photography, for their traditional audience).
[+] [-] adgjlsfhk1|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|9 months ago|reply
(via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44352455, but no comments there)
[+] [-] gattr|9 months ago|reply
TL;DR: VCRO is capable of imaging spy- and other classified US satellites. An automated filtering system (involves routing through some government processing facility) is in place to remove them from the freshly captured raw data used for the public transient phenomena alert service. 3 days later, unredacted data is made available (by then the elusive, variable-orbit assets are long gone.)
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/vera-rub...
[+] [-] ramijames|9 months ago|reply
[+] [-] mapt|9 months ago|reply
What's that faint illuminated tendril extending from M61 (the large spiral galaxy at the bottom center of the image) upwards towards that red giant? It seems too straight and off-center to be an extension of the spiral arm.
EDIT: The supposed "Tidal tail" on M61 was evidently known from deep astrophotography, but only rarely detected & commented upon.