The Cosmic Treasure Chest

This animation brings the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's glittering view of the sky to life, starting with a closeup of two galaxies, one (left) ancient and quiet, and the other (right) a bright pinwheel of newly-formed stars. 

The view widens, revealing more galaxies in an astonishing array of different shapes, sizes, and colors. Zooming out further, we see a Universe teeming with stars and galaxies. We’re looking at Rubin’s 14-square-degree view of the Virgo Cluster, a large collection of galaxies about 55 million light-years away from Earth. This immense view contains about 10 million galaxies — just 0.05%  of the roughly 20 billion galaxies Rubin will image during its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). 

The video zooms in to focus on Messier 49, the largest galaxy in the image, and then pans up to a busy region where a galaxy triple merger, two large spiral galaxies, and a dense galaxy cluster all reside among the scatter of stars and distant galaxies. These views highlight the detail Rubin reveals in its images while simultaneously capturing huge swaths of the sky. Only Rubin Observatory can produce such large images with this much color and richness so quickly — the observations in this animation were collected in just 7 nights. 

The image featured in this animation was captured by Rubin Observatory using the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera — the largest digital camera in the world. 

You can explore the image on your own — or tour a selection of highlights — using Rubin's SkyViewer on rubinobservatory.org.