The Legacy Survey of Space and Time officially launches, as scientists begin filming ‘greatest cosmic movie ever made’
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time just kicked off one of the largest and most detailed observations of the sky, with the help of the largest digital camera on Earth.
The cosmos is about to get a close-up of appropriately epic proportions.
Resting on a Chilean mountaintop, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has officially started the landmark Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a 10-year effort to create the most detailed and comprehensive record of the universe’s history.
After nearly 20 years of work, the LSST will use the world’s largest digital camera strapped to the largest survey telescope on the planet to change humanity’s understanding of the cosmos. The LSST brings together thousands of scientists from around the world who will use the images captured at the Rubin Observatory to map potentially billions of galaxies, find asteroids, analyze the solar system and study the secrets behind dark matter, the nearly invisible matter that makes up 80% of the universe.
“Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made,” Brian Stone, acting director of the National Science Foundation, said in a statement.
After kicking off in June, the universe’s blockbuster moment features images taken of the entire southern sky that put the spectacle of IMAX, the large-screen movie format, to shame, explained Jonathan Blazek, an associate professor of physics at Northeastern University who is helping lead the LSST’s dark energy project.
“It’s going to be the largest astronomical data set that’s ever been collected,” Blazek said. “What this means is we’re going to be seeing more objects, we’re going to be seeing further away and the objects that we do see we’re going to have in more detail than we’ve been able to see before.”
The Rubin Observatory’s camera is already capturing a new image about every 40 seconds, and over the course of a decade, the LSST will return to some spots in the universe up to 800 times. Those images will form the foundation of the most detailed cosmic census ever recorded, Blazek said. In a pre-launch survey, it took only a month and a half for the observatory to find more than 11,000 previously undiscovered asteroids, including 33 near-Earth objects, according to early data from the Rubin Observatory.
The entire scientific community will make use of this data in a large-scale effort that Blazek compared to the Avengers of modern astronomy and astrophysics.
“We’re entering this era where all these clever things that people have been working on for the last decade or more are finally usable and needed,” Blazek said.
Blazek’s particular group is made up of over 1,400 scientists focused on uncovering the secrets of dark matter and dark energy, the little-understood force behind the universe’s rapidly accelerating expansion.
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“We’re trying to understand the structure of the universe, how it first started, what are the main components of the universe that are driving its evolution … and where are we headed,” Blazek said. “What does the state of the galaxy look like in billions or trillions of years’ time?”
Blazek’s expertise is in using what are called static probes to precisely measure the shapes and positions of the galaxies. By looking at multiple images of the same spot in the universe over time, researchers can create more detailed and precise images of how the cosmos evolves.
The LSST, with its sheer volume of imagery, is a perfect tool for this, allowing Blazek and his team to conduct cosmic cartography in unprecedented ways, he said. Conducting this kind of galactic mapping is also vital to learning more about dark matter and dark energy, two mysterious forces that, while largely invisible, can be studied through how they affect galaxies and other more visible interstellar bodies.
“By seeking to understand the enigmatic phenomena of dark energy and dark matter, we are not just observing the stars; we are striving to grasp the fundamental laws that govern our existence,” Darío Gil, under secretary for science at the U.S. Department of Energy, said in a statement.
The public won’t have to wait 10 years to get new findings from the LSST. Every few years, scientists will release an analysis of several years’ worth of data. In parallel, the LSST will put out alerts every single night when there are any astronomical changes from the previous night, like a new asteroid entering view or the first detection of the light from an exploding star.
Those alerts, which could amount to millions per night, will give other scientists and the public a heads-up so they can point their telescopes at the sky and capture the cosmic development.
“It’s designed to be everything for everyone,” Blazek said. “The goal is that it can really serve the entire astronomical community in some way.”
