The Vera C. Rubin Observatory formally switched on its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time on June 29, 2026, the LSST’s own progress log states, putting the world’s largest digital camera into a continuous nightly routine that will sweep the southern sky for the next ten years.
Perched on Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes, the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time is meant to assemble an ultra-wide time-lapse record of the universe, capturing roughly a thousand images per night and revisiting every visible patch of the southern sky every few nights. Per the Rubin news release revealing the first 2025 imagery, the first preview images already showed what the optics can do, including color shots of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae and test exposures that turned up millions of galaxies in a single frame.
Rubin’s Decade-Long LSST Is Now Live
The shift from preview imagery to live survey mode is now official. The LSST Survey Progress page, last updated on June 22, 2026, states that the observatory has begun the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time as of June 29, 2026. Construction work had wrapped with a formal handover from the construction project to operations in late October 2025, after which a Pre-LSST phase ran from October 2025 through June 2026 with engineering observations mixed in.
From Cerro Pachón, each clear night of the next decade is meant to follow the same template. The telescope sweeps the visible southern sky image by image, returning to the same patches every three to four nights. Over the full survey, that cadence produces an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse of the universe rather than a single static snapshot.
The image cadence is what gives the science its teeth. Quick repeat imaging of the same patch lets Rubin pick up supernovae and asteroids in near-real-time, the kind of catch that a slower survey would miss. The same cadence keeps tracking objects that move across the field, like near-Earth asteroids whose paths need many revisits per night to pin down. The base survey is paired with shorter, deeper exposures on selected fields that push faint objects near the detection limit, a combination that lets one observatory serve several scientific communities at once.
The 3,200-Megapixel LSST Camera
The workhorse is the LSST Camera, a 3,200-megapixel sensor designed and built by a team at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and installed at the heart of Rubin’s 8.4-meter telescope. Per the LSST project overview page, the camera itself weighs about 6,200 pounds (2,800 kilograms), roughly the size of a small car, and was lifted into place after more than a decade of construction. The Pre-LSST engineering runs were partly aimed at confirming that the optical system and the imaging sensor were both ready to take pictures at the depth and accuracy required for the decade-long survey.
That scale is the point. Each single image taken by the LSST Camera covers an area of sky equal to 45 full Moons, which is how the survey can sweep the entire visible southern sky in just a few nights.
- 3,200 megapixels across the LSST Camera’s image sensor
- 8.4-meter primary mirror on Rubin’s telescope
- About 6,200 pounds (2,800 kilograms) camera weight, the size of a small car
- 45 full Moons of sky covered in each single exposure
What Year One Will Probably Map
The Rubin Observatory has framed its first-year science priorities to fit the cadence, with the team expecting the dataset to grow into the most comprehensive map of the southern sky yet assembled. The first year of data alone is on track to be greater than the total collected by every other optical observatory combined, by Rubin’s own count, and that archive-level scale is what gives the priorities their bite.
At roughly 1,000 images per night, the survey can pick up supernovae within hours of the explosion and pull asteroid trajectories before they move out of frame, the cadence that makes the dataset usable for transient-event astronomy as well as steady sky mapping. Rubin’s design also feeds automated alerts to the wider astronomy community, so other telescopes can slew toward a transient the moment Rubin’s pipeline flags it, a workflow already in wide use for time-domain astronomy.
Rubin’s science team has named several priority targets for the first 12 months of the survey.
- Asteroids and comets in the Solar System, including near-Earth objects for planetary defense
- Supernovae and other transient cosmic events caught in the act
- Pulsating stars across the Milky Way whose brightness cycles need repeated checks
- The structure and clustering of billions of far-off galaxies
- Whatever new phenomena the sky produces that no earlier survey has had a chance to catch
The 500-Petabyte Data Avalanche
Even before the live survey began, the Rubin team had projected how much imagery the cadence would yield. The observatory’s data pipeline is built to process about 20 terabytes per night, with the full 10-year survey expected to generate roughly 500 petabytes of processed data plus a separate 15-petabyte catalog database that grows as more observations layer in. The final dataset is meant to contain billions of objects with trillions of measurements.
That scale is reshaping more than the science itself. It is also forcing changes in the way astronomers move, store, and query petabyte-scale archives, even as older satellites come under pressure of their own, like the Katalyst-led mission to capture NASA’s aging Swift telescope in low-Earth orbit. Rubin’s cadence feeds regular public data releases, so the archive is meant to be queried by scientists anywhere with a connection, even if they cannot travel to the mountain itself.
Vera Rubin, the Astronomer the Observatory Is Named For
The observatory carries a name that ties the science to a person. Vera C. Rubin was the U.S. astronomer whose observations of galaxy rotation curves provided the first convincing evidence for unseen mass in the universe, the missing material later named dark matter. The observatory was named in her honor, according to Rubin’s own news release.
Dark matter and dark energy are thought to make up about 95 percent of the combined mass and energy of the universe, the Rubin Observatory’s own news release states, yet their nature remains unknown. That gap is the central science question Rubin’s decade of southern-sky images is built to chip at, and the regular public data releases are intended to make the answer-shaping work possible from any research desk with a connection to the archive.
We’re going to see large numbers of scientists across the world working with this data set, studying the universe in a way that they haven’t been able to before.
That is Phil Marshall, the observatory’s deputy director of operations, in remarks released alongside the start of the survey.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time begin?
The 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time officially began on June 29, 2026, per the LSST Survey Progress page. Construction was handed over to operations in late October 2025, and a Pre-LSST commissioning phase ran from October 2025 to June 2026 with engineering observations mixed in.
What will the LSST map first?
Rubin’s priority targets in the survey’s opening year include asteroids and comets in the Solar System, near-Earth objects for planetary defense, supernovae and other transient events, pulsating stars across the Milky Way, and the structure of billions of far-off galaxies. The observatory expects the dataset to surface new phenomena no earlier survey has caught.
How much data will Rubin’s 10-year LSST generate?
The Rubin Observatory’s data pipeline is designed to process roughly 20 terabytes per night of image data, with the full 10 years expected to produce approximately 500 petabytes of processed images plus a separate 15-petabyte catalog. By Rubin’s count, the first year alone is on track to exceed the total collected by every other optical observatory combined.
Why is the Vera C. Rubin Observatory named after Vera Rubin?
Rubin was the surname of the U.S. astronomer whose galaxy rotation observations gave the field its strongest initial case for unseen mass in the universe, material later named dark matter. The observatory that now carries her name is set to spend ten years trying to pin down what that mass actually is, alongside a related dark energy problem.
Who funds and operates the LSST?
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. It is operated jointly by NSF NOIRLab and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. France’s CNRS/IN2P3 has contributed key support during construction and operations, and the project lists contributions from more than 40 international organizations and teams.
