On 23 June 2025, the world will get a look at the first images from one of the most powerful telescopes ever built: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Perched high in the Chilean Andes, the observatory will take hundreds of images of the southern hemisphere sky, every night for 10 years. In doing so, it will create the most complete time-lapse record of our Universe ever assembled. This scientific effort is known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
Rather than focusing on small patches of sky, the Rubin Observatory will scan the entire visible southern sky every few nights. Scientists will use this rolling deep-sky snapshot to track supernovae (exploding stars), asteroids, black holes, and galaxies as they evolve and change in real time. This is astronomy not as a static snapshot, but as a cosmic story unfolding night by night.
