#lsst — Public Fediverse posts

Rubin Observatory's first LSST Camera release: 500k galaxies in the COSMOS field

https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-new-window-cosmos-field

Comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49183079

#HackerNews #RubinObservatory #LSST #Camera #COSMOS #galaxies #astronomy

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST: Meet the World's Largest Digital Camera

https://web.brid.gy/r/https://in.mashable.com/science/112485/nsf-doe-vera-c-rubin-observatory-lsst-meet-the-worlds-largest-digital-camera

Rubin Observatory Opens Deep Window on Famous Cosmic Field: https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2618/ = https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-new-window-cosmos-field - a new #Rubin image featuring hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies in and around the #COSMOSField marks the Observatory’s first #LSST Camera image and catalog release for science.

"Vera Rubin Observatory" by XKCD comic - Bingo card of potential discoveries to be made by the Vera Rubin Observatory @VRubinObs large-scale telescope in the Andes Mountains in Chile. Many new discoveries are expected. As you spot news matching this card discovered, you can mark that spot with an X. First to get a line across the card and yell "bingo!" wins. One of these is by far least likely of all the rare occurrences listed. https://xkcd.com/3278/ #LSST #astronomy #space #science #humor

A more technical update about the start of the #LSST with the #RubinObservatory in spite of non-perfect performance: https://community.lsst.org/t/the-lsst-has-started/12201 -> "a brief summary of what has prompted us to draw the early operations optimization phase to a close and get the survey started. [...] Pre-LSST observations show that the as-built Simonyi Telescope can already deliver an arcsecond sky survey, and there is a technical pathway to make the ~10% improvement in delivered image quality needed to approximately match the baseline survey simulation and deliver a sub-arcsecond LSST, as required. [...] The Board also noted that the time was right: all eight LSST Science Collaborations sent written support for starting the LSST while continuing to improve performance in parallel."

Massive 3,200 Megapixel Camera Will Take 700 Photos Every Night for 10 Years https://petapixel.com/2026/06/30/the-worlds-largest-digital-camera-just-started-its-10-year-mission-to-map-the-universe/ #legacysurveyofspaceandtime #veracrubinobservatory #astrophysics #observatory #lsstcamera #astronomy #telescope #noirlab #science #Space #chile #space #News #lsst #nsf

After decades of preparation, the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time has begun at last. Over the coming decade, the #LSST is expected to discover millions of asteroids, shed light on dark matter and dark energy, and widen our view of the cosmos. https://www.geekwire.com/2026/rubin-observatory-lsst-cosmic-movie/ #RubinObservatory #Space #Astronomy

Professor Andjelka B. Kovačević’s video presentation for the IAU Symposium 404 is now online - “Multiscale Coherence for Astrobiology and Technosignatures with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory LSST” (Kovačević, Mason, Ciprijanović et al.).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C23gezrXAWk #LSST #VeraRubin #Observatory #technosignatures #Astronomy #AndjelkaKovacevic

Weekly Update from the Open Journal of Astrophysics – 18/04/2026

It is Saturday morning, and therefore time for yet another update of activity at the Open Journal of Astrophysics. Since the last update we have published a further six papers, bringing the number in Volume 9 (2026) to 82 and the total so far published by OJAp up to 530.

I will continue to include the posts made on our Mastodon account (on Fediscience) to encourage you to visit it. Mastodon is a really excellent service, and a more than adequate replacement for X/Twitter (which nobody should be using); these announcements also show the DOI for each paper.

The first paper to report this week is “Beyond Spherical geometry: Unraveling complex features of objects orbiting around stars from its transit light curve using deep learning” by Ushasi Bhowmick & Shivam Kumaran (Indian Space Research Institute, Ahmedabad, India). This study uses deep neural networks to predict the shape of objects orbiting stars based on their transit light curves, demonstrating the potential to extract geometric information from these systems. It was published on Monday 13th April in the folder Earth and Planetary Astrophysics and the overlay can be seen here:

You can find the officially accepted version on arXiv here and the announcement on Fediverse here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116395992732332356

The second paper for this week, also published on Monday 13th April Apil in the folder but in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, is “statmorph-lsst: Quantifying and correcting morphological biases in galaxy surveys” by Elizaveta Sazonova (U. Waterloo, Canada) and an international cast of 18 others. This paper presents an investigation of potential biases in quantitative morphology metrics used in galaxy evolution studies, proposing two new measurements to resolve biases, and provides a related Python package (statmorph-lsst), which can be found here on github.

The overlay for this one is here:

The official version of the paper can be found on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116396069424189312

Next one up, the third paper of the week, one of four published on Friday 17th April, is “Disentangling the galactic and intergalactic components in 313 observed Lyman-alpha line profiles between redshift 0 and 5” by Siddhartha Gurung-López (Universitat de València, Spain) and 7 others based in Spain and Germany. Published in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies, this paper uses the zELDA package to analyze Lyman-alpha photons from star-forming galaxies, revealing IGM effects dominate Lyman-alpha observability at high redshifts, while galactic outflows become more important at lower z.

The overlay for this one is here:

The final, accepted version can be found on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116418831864134501

The fourth paper this week, also published on Friday 17th April is “Using Symbolic Regression to Emulate the Radial Fourier Transform of the Sérsic Profile for Fast, Accurate and Differentiable Galaxy Profile Fitting” by Tim B. Miller (Northwestern University, USA) and Imad Pasha (Yale University, USA). This one is published in the folder Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics: it develops an emulator for galaxy profile fitting in Fourier space, improving speed by 2.5 times with minimal accuracy loss, aiding in managing increasing data flow.

The overlay is here:

The finally accepted version of this paper can be found here and the Mastodon announcement follows:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116418855010158656

The fifth paper for this week is “The THESAN project: Lyman-alpha emitters as probes of ionized bubble sizes” by Meredith Neyer (MIT, USA) and 6 others based in the USA, Colombia, Canada, Japan and UK. The study uses THESAN simulations to explore how Lyman-alpha emitters (LAEs) trace ionized bubble sizes during the Epoch of Reionization, providing a framework for interpreting LAE surveys. This was published on Friday 17th April in the folder Astrophysics of Galaxies.

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the authorized version of this paper on arXiv here and the Fediverse announcement is here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116418887225003954

The sixth and final paper for this week is “Closed-Form Statistical Relations Between Projected Separation, Semimajor Axis, Companion Mass, and Host Acceleration” by Timothy D Brandt (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA). This was published on Friday 17th April in the folder Solar and Stellar Astrophysics. In this paper the author derives statistical relationships between radial velocity, a companion’s mass, and projected separation, useful for calculations requiring derivatives. The results are verified with empirical comparisons to existing literature.

The overlay for this one is here:

You can find the officially-accepted version on arXiv here and the Mastodon announcement here:

https://fediscience.org/@OJ_Astro/116418938017199814

And that concludes this week’s update. I’ll do another one at the end of next week.

P.S. Just a reminder, for those of you into LinkedIn, that we now have a page there.

Rubin Observatory spustil alertový systém
📡 Historický milník: Observatoř Vera C. Rubin v Chile spustila 24. 2. real-time alertový systém. První noc — 800 000 alertů: supernovy, proměnné hvězdy, aktivní jádra galaxií, asteroidy.
Cíl: až 7 milionů alertů/noc. Změny hlášeny do 2 minut od snímku. Největší digitální kamera (3 200 Mpx) začíná plnit účel. Letos startuje desetiletý průzkum LSST.
https://www.nsf.gov/news/nsf-doe-vera-c-rubin-observatory-launches-real-time
#RubinObservatory #LSST #Astronomy #Astronomie #Supernova #OpenScience #DataScience

#LSST performs very well for large impactors ☄️, discovering about 79.7% of objects larger than 140 m before impact. Only 50.3% of 50–140 m impactors, 26.8% of 20–50 m impactors, and 10.5% of 10–20 m impactors are discovered 🔭 at all. About 60% of large impactors fail to reach a one-year warning threshold. Upper mid-size objects are usually discovered only a few months before impact 💥 https://www.newplanetarium.com/journal/2026-01-29

#RubinObservatory #AsteroidThreat

"Rubin Observatory sends out thousands of data alerts" by GeekWire / @alanboyle - The first night of astronomical alerts from the high-resolution sky survey of #RubinObservatory #LSST was a batch of 800,000 possible new object detections. This is apparently the new normal. Astronomers have a flood of new data to process every day. https://www.geekwire.com/2026/rubin-observatory-data-alert/ #space #astronomy #tech

Rubin Observatory spots an #asteroid that spins fast enough to set a record
The asteroid, known as #2025MN45, is nearly half a mile (710 meters) in diameter and makes a full rotation every 1.88 minutes, based on an analysis of data from the #VeraCRubinObservatory in #Chile.
2025 MN45 is one of more than 2,100 solar system objects detected during the observatory’s commissioning phase. Over time, the #LSST Camera tracked variations in the light reflected by those objects.
https://www.geekwire.com/2026/rubin-observatory-asteroid-spins-fast-record/

Rubin Observatory and the Galaxies

Starting in late 2025, when it begins the decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), Rubin will capture skies like these in more detail than ever before.

Credit: @VRubinObs / P.J. Assuncao Lago

https://noirlab.edu/public/images/MWpanov3-CC/

#Rubin #RubinObservatory #LSST #galaxies #MilkyWay #Galaxy #LMC #SMC #NOIRLab #astrodon #photography #astrophotography #nighphotography

First Ever Images from the Vera Rubin Telescope [Chile]
--
https://youtu.be/tu4cpaDZ68g?si=FaeVBYNRYIbEfqiU <-- shared technical video
--
https://rubinobservatory.org/ <-- Rubin Observatory home page
--
“The Vera C. Rubin telescope has just [mid-2025] released its first images, and they’re spectacular…
On a mountain in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, with its massive 3.2-billion-pixel camera, is capturing images that rival those from the James Webb Space Telescope. Get ready to see some of the most stunning astronomical images ever taken as [they] explore how this groundbreaking project will help us unlock the secrets of the universe. This is just the beginning...”
#verarubin #fedscience #fedservice #Coquimbo #Chile #LegacySurveyofSpaceandTime #LSST #Andes #telescope #remotesensing #image #imagery #astronomy #astronomical #observation #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #extraterrestrial #research
@NSF @DOE @SLAC

Vera Rubin : pourquoi un nouveau télescope... sur Terre ?
https://leblob.fr/videos/vera-rubin-pourquoi-un-nouveau-telescope-sur-terre (vidéo, 5:54 min)
#astronomie #astrophysique #espace #Univers #cosmos #tech #télescope #science #Rubin #vidéo #LSST #matièreNoire #énergieSombre #pixels #données #athmosphère

The University of Washington was one of the founding partners in the effort to build the #RubinObservatory - and now that Rubin's first pictures of the cosmos have been released, UW astronomers are taking a victory lap and looking forward to the discoveries to come. https://www.geekwire.com/2025/university-of-washington-rubin-observatory/ #Space #LSST

A story on how Australia is contributing to the Vera Rubin Observatory via the data wrangling experts in Data Central, part of the AAO, at Macquarie University. And also Swinburne.

https://lighthouse.mq.edu.au/media-releases/australian-data-experts-to-support-worlds-largest-sky-survey

#VeraRubinObservatory #RubinObservatory #LSST #Astronomy #Astrodon

#MPG:
"
Erste Bilder des Vera C. Rubin Observatoriums
"
"Die ersten Bilder sind größer und tiefer als je zuvor, sie zeigen Ausschnitte der Milchstraße und des tiefen Universums. Astronominnen und Astronomen der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft berichten von ihrer geplanten Forschung"

https://www.mpg.de/24886437/vera-rubin-observatorium-erste-bilder

23.6.2025

#Astronomie #Astrophysik #Chile #Digitalkamera #DOE #Himmelsdurchmusterung #LSST #NOIRLAB #NSF #Observatorium #SimonyiSurveyTelescope #SLAC #Teleskop #VeraCRubinObservatorium

Hands-On at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and Its First Enormous 5 Gigapixel Image https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/hands-on-at-the-vera-c-rubin-observatory-and-its-first-enormous-5-gigapixel-image/ #veracrubinobservatory #astrophotography #rubinobservatory #lsstcamera #Spotlight #asteroids #astronomy #spotlight #telescope #Features #features #galaxies #science #cosmos #Space #chile #space #lsst

The World’s Largest Camera Captures 10 Million Galaxies, Discovers 2,104 Asteroids in First Photos https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/the-worlds-largest-camera-captures-10-million-galaxies-discovers-2104-asteroids-in-first-photos/ #veracrubinobservatory #astrophotography #rubinobservatory #lsstcamera #asteroids #astronomy #telescope #galaxies #science #cosmos #Space #space #News #lsst

3 images and a video released early by the Vera Rubin Observatory as an appetiser for the big "First Look" event starting in just under 9 hours:
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/get-a-sneak-peek-at-the-rubin-observatorys-gems/

#Astronomy #Astrodon #RubinObservatory #LSST

These Are the First Images Captured by the Largest Camera Ever Made https://petapixel.com/2025/06/22/these-are-the-first-images-captured-by-the-largest-camera-ever-made/ #veracrubinobservatory #3200megapixels #observatory #worldrecord #darkenergy #lsstcamera #astronomy #firstlook #telescope #universe #science #galaxy #Space #chile #space #News #lsst #doe #nsf

"Software suggests Rubin Observatory will discover millions of solar system objects" by GeekWire / @alanboyle - Getting a grasp on what effect the high-resolution sky survey of #RubinObservatory #LSST will have: using previous rates of discovery of asteroids to estimate what we don't yet know, multi-university Sorcha simulation forecasts LSST may discover half of all then-known asteroids within a year. And its majority share will continue to grow. https://www.geekwire.com/2025/sorcha-software-rubin-observatory-millions/ #space #astronomy