Rubin Observatory at Twilight

This image shows Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, beneath a late-twilight sky. Rubin is being built to conduct the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). This survey will observe the entire visible southern sky every few nights over the course of a decade, capturing about 1000 images of the sky every night and giving us a new view of our evolving Universe. The LSST is set to probe four areas of science, one of which is mapping the Milky Way to answer questions about its structure and formation. Once Rubin Observatory comes online in 2025, scientists will be able to access the data taken every night of operation. Rubin Observatory is a joint initiative of the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy (DOE). Once completed, Rubin will be operated jointly by NSF’s NOIRLab and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to carry out the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

Alt Text: A white observatory building with a shiny silver dome sits on a rocky site under a dark late-twilight sky. A second small dome sits on a neighboring hill. The sky fills the top half of the image and is a uniform dark blue, with a hint of orange on the left horizon. Tiny pinpricks of stars are scattered in the sky. The brown, rocky desert landscape fills the bottom half of the image, darkened so that details are hard to pick out. A collection of shipping containers are lined up side by side in the lower right.