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Columnist and Space

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory gets started next year. I can't wait

Around the middle of 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will begin its mission to help us better understand the cosmos. There's a lot to look forward to, says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

By Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

23 December 2024

On 22 August 2024, summit staff reinstalled Rubin Observatory's commissioning camera (ComCam) on the telescope. ComCam has previously been on the telescope, but was removed before the installation of the secondary mirror in late July. ComCam ??? a smaller (144 megapixel), simpler version of the full 3200-megapixel LSST Camera ??? is being used for testing activities prior to installing the LSST Camera, anticipated to happen late 2024. In the coming weeks the summit team will install the primary/tertiary mirror, enabling ComCam to produce the first astronomical data from the Simonyi Survey Telescope.

Rubin Observatory’s commissioning camera (ComCam)

Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/H. Stockebrand

Sometime in May or June, as the southern hemisphere winter sets in beneath the skies of the Chilean Atacama desert, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will open its dome and the largest digital camera in history will capture its first science-grade image of the cosmos. Under the Atacama’s pristine and stable atmosphere, Rubin will begin a 10-year mission to provide humanity with an extraordinary new vision of the cosmos with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Twenty-four years in the making, the observatory is a brand new astronomical facility.…

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