Vera Rubin Observatory Fires Up Discovery Machine, Sends 800,000 Alerts in a Single Night
The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory has launched its real-time discovery machine, sending out 800,000 astronomical alerts in a single night — a number expected to rise to 7 million per night as the system reaches full capacity. The observatory, named after the astronomer who proved the existence of dark matter, will continuously scan the entire visible sky every few nights, cataloging billions of objects and detecting changes in real time. The scale of the project is unprecedented: it will generate more data about the universe in its first year than all previous astronomical surveys combined, opening a new era of discovery in which the cosmos is monitored like a living organism.
Read Full Story at Stanford / SLACThe heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
— Psalm 19:1
As humanity builds instruments capable of scanning the entire visible sky every few nights, the psalmist's ancient declaration takes on new resonance. Each of those 800,000 nightly alerts is, in a sense, a proclamation — the heavens declaring what they have always declared, now heard at a scale the ancients could scarcely imagine.