Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
Feed Link: https://www.engadget.com/
---

Title: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory shares first images from planned decade-
long survey of the sky

Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2025 19:25:57 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-ve...

The National Science Foundation just shared the first images captured by the
Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a sample of the footage it'll capture as part of a
planned decade-long survey that's starting later in 2025. The project, dubbed
the "Legacy Survey of Time and Space" is predicted to lead to the discovery
of "millions of new asteroids within the first two years" the survey is
running.

In just a 10 hour period, the National Science Foundation says that the Rubin
Observatory "discovered 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids in our solar
system, including seven near-Earth asteroids." The long-term survey project
could lead to even more insights, particularly into larger cosmic unknowns
like dark matter and dark energy.

The idea is appropriate given the observatory's origins. Jointly funded by
the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy's Office of
Science, the Large Synoptic Telescope in Cerro Pach├│n, Chile was renamed the
Vera C. Rubin Observatory after astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who's research into
gravitational rotation was used as conclusive evidence of the existence of
dark matter.

The short video embedded above should give you a good sense of the scale of
the Rubin Observatory's operation. That's a stitched together view of about
10 million galaxies captured during 10 hours of photography, "roughly .05
percent of the approximately 20 billion galaxies" the observatory will
capture during its survey.

"The amount of data gathered by Rubin Observatory in its first year alone
will be greater than that collected by all other optical observatories
combined," the National Science Foundation says. "This treasure trove of data
will help scientists make countless discoveries about the universe and will
serve as an incomparable resource for scientific exploration for decades to
come."

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/science/space/the-ve...
first-images-from-planned-decade-long-survey-of-the-sky-
192557094.html?src=rss

---
VRSS v2.1.180528