-With images-
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has today released its long-awaited first images of the night sky, marking the beginning of the most ambitious astronomical survey in history – the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).
This significant project, over two decades in the making, will provide an ultra-high-definition, time-lapse view of the southern sky over the next ten years, capturing the evolution of the Universe in motion.
Each night, the Rubin Observatory will collect around 20 terabytes of data, imaging the entire visible sky every few days. The result will be a vast dataset containing observations of billions of stars, galaxies, asteroids, and other celestial objects.
The LSST aims to transform our understanding of the Universe, revealing phenomena ranging from the structure of the Milky Way and the nature of dark matter to the life cycles of stars and galaxies. The full survey is expected to produce over 500 petabytes of data - the equivalent of half-a-million 4K Hollywood movies.
The UK is playing a leading role in this international project, with £23 million of support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) enabling British scientists to contribute to both the scientific goals and the advanced computing infrastructure behind the project.
The UK will host one of three global data centres that will manage and process Rubin's data, supporting a science portal that connects around 1,500 researchers worldwide.
Durham University is one of the key UK institutions involved in LSST. Researchers at Durham are helping to develop sophisticated tools to handle and interpret the immense volumes of data Rubin will generate.
Durham University scientists will focus on a range of frontier topics in astrophysics, including the search for dark matter, the evolution of black holes and galaxies, the behaviour of transient cosmic events like supernovae, and the discovery of faint structures around the Milky Way.
Durham's Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy is leading international efforts to investigate the behaviour of black holes. Dr Matthew Temple is heading a collaboration of 250 researchers working to identify over 100 million supermassive black holes that shine as active galactic nuclei.
By studying how these black holes flicker and vary in brightness over time, researchers will better understand how they formed and evolved alongside their host galaxies over billions of years.
Meanwhile, Scientists in Durham's Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology are developing innovative techniques to search for the elusive dark matter. Assistant Professor Djuna Croon and her team are using Rubin data to look for tiny, invisible objects by observing how they bend light – a method known as gravitational microlensing.
Professor Alastair Edge is using Rubin's frequent sky scans to explore how the biggest galaxies in the Universe grow and change. Other Durham scientists, including Professor Chris Done and Professor Simone Scaringi, will use the data to study energetic bursts and flares from stars and black holes, offering new insights into how matter behaves in the most extreme environments.
Durham's strength in both observational astronomy and computational cosmology positions it to play a central role in the analysis of Rubin's dataset.
Using powerful simulations and data analysis techniques, Durham University researchers will compare real-world discoveries with theoretical models, helping to answer fundamental questions about the Universe's formation and structure.
High-resolution versions of the First Look images are now available to download and share.
