JWST got its own thread, so it's only fair...
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory/LSST, an 8.4m telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile, will see first light in under two years, with first light of ComCam (the commissioning camera: a smaller, engineering-focused camera) likely to happen next summer. Construction was delayed by about 2.5 years due to COVID-19: a 9 month shutdown at the site trickled down into a much longer total delay, as contractors flew home and had to get new visas, companies picked up other construction contracts, Chile implemented strict COVID entry requirements, and COVID-safety policies had to be put in place. First light was originally going to be this past winter; hopefully that's given us time to perfect the analysis software, which is all available on GitHub.
During operations, LSST will take a 3.2 gigapixel image of a 3.5 degree field of view (that's 9 full moons across!) every 30 seconds, resulting in about 15 terabytes of data every night. That means we'll observe the whole southern sky to roughly 24th magnitude every 2-3 nights and basically find everything that goes bump in the night: supernovae, variable stars, quasars/AGN, asteroids, and comets. We'll provide a nightly stream of transient sources to the community via difference imaging (roughly 10,000 alerts on each image every 30 seconds), and roughly annual public data releases of all data taken to that point. The survey is planned for 10 years, and will result in very deep coadds, down to about 28th magnitude over the whole southern sky by survey's end.
Rubin Observatory is also the most impacted by the large number of satellites that are planned to be launched by Starlink and others. Every exposure goes very deep, covers a very large sky area, and an important part of the survey is finding near earth asteroids, which is best done during twilight when satellites are brightest. Mitigation approaches and conversations with SpaceX on how they can make their satellites less bright are ongoing, but it's definitely going to impact our data quality.
We're the first US national observatory to be named after a woman! Took them long enough, but there are more to come (e.g. the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, formerly WFIRST, expected to launch in ~5 years).
See the photo gallery for images and mockups of the observatory site, camera, telescope construction process, and various webcams (as I post this, some are unavailable due to a snow storm shutdown on site). It's nice to see a completed telescope dome up there now, with the mirror support structure in place (the mirrors haven't been installed yet, but are waiting on site).
I'm a member of the LSST Data Management Alert Production team, and I'll try to post relevant press releases, data tidbits, and public outreach information and links as they come available, and of course answer questions.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory/LSST, an 8.4m telescope on Cerro Pachón in Chile, will see first light in under two years, with first light of ComCam (the commissioning camera: a smaller, engineering-focused camera) likely to happen next summer. Construction was delayed by about 2.5 years due to COVID-19: a 9 month shutdown at the site trickled down into a much longer total delay, as contractors flew home and had to get new visas, companies picked up other construction contracts, Chile implemented strict COVID entry requirements, and COVID-safety policies had to be put in place. First light was originally going to be this past winter; hopefully that's given us time to perfect the analysis software, which is all available on GitHub.
During operations, LSST will take a 3.2 gigapixel image of a 3.5 degree field of view (that's 9 full moons across!) every 30 seconds, resulting in about 15 terabytes of data every night. That means we'll observe the whole southern sky to roughly 24th magnitude every 2-3 nights and basically find everything that goes bump in the night: supernovae, variable stars, quasars/AGN, asteroids, and comets. We'll provide a nightly stream of transient sources to the community via difference imaging (roughly 10,000 alerts on each image every 30 seconds), and roughly annual public data releases of all data taken to that point. The survey is planned for 10 years, and will result in very deep coadds, down to about 28th magnitude over the whole southern sky by survey's end.
Rubin Observatory is also the most impacted by the large number of satellites that are planned to be launched by Starlink and others. Every exposure goes very deep, covers a very large sky area, and an important part of the survey is finding near earth asteroids, which is best done during twilight when satellites are brightest. Mitigation approaches and conversations with SpaceX on how they can make their satellites less bright are ongoing, but it's definitely going to impact our data quality.
We're the first US national observatory to be named after a woman! Took them long enough, but there are more to come (e.g. the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, formerly WFIRST, expected to launch in ~5 years).
See the photo gallery for images and mockups of the observatory site, camera, telescope construction process, and various webcams (as I post this, some are unavailable due to a snow storm shutdown on site). It's nice to see a completed telescope dome up there now, with the mirror support structure in place (the mirrors haven't been installed yet, but are waiting on site).
I'm a member of the LSST Data Management Alert Production team, and I'll try to post relevant press releases, data tidbits, and public outreach information and links as they come available, and of course answer questions.
