Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)

Legacy Survey of Space and Time

The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is a planned 10-year survey of the southern sky that will take place at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on the El Peñon peak of Cerro Pachón in northern Chile with an expected start of science operations in 2025.

The survey data will enable researchers around the world to better evaluate a wide range of pressing questions about the attributes of dark energy and dark matter, the formation of the Milky Way, the properties of small bodies in the solar system, the trajectories of potentially hazardous asteroids and the possible existence of undiscovered explosive phenomena.

Simulations demonstrate that the telescope and camera can deliver a uniform and deep (24.5 magnitude in r-band for one 15s exposure) 18,000 square degree survey and will produce over 5.2 million exposures in ten years. This "movie," which is sensitive to redshifts of up to z=3, will open an entirely new window on the Universe:  the time domain. The Rubin Observatory will produce, on average, 15 terabytes of LSST data per night, yielding an uncompressed data set of 200 petabytes. Dedicated facilities will process the image data in near real time.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory

will capture the faint light of distant brown dwarfs to help scientists understand the Milky Way’s formation and evolution. Too big to be planets but too small to be stars, distant brown dwarfs are a key ingredient for understanding the history of the Milky Way. Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time will detect a population of ancient brown dwarfs about 20 times bigger than we’ve previously seen, revealing the processes that shaped our home galaxy.

For updates on the construction and project go to: https://rubinobservatory.org/