Astronomers at the University of Washington and Queen’s University Belfast are set to revolutionize our knowledge of the solar system with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, expected to launch later this year.
Scheduled to come online in 2025, the NSF-DOE observatory will survey the entire visible sky every few nights using its 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope and a unique three-mirror design. This powerful combination of breadth and depth is said to create an unprecedented time-lapse “movie” of the cosmos over the next decade.
To predict what discoveries Rubin will make, the team developed an innovative open-source software called Sorcha. This simulator ingests Rubin’s planned observing schedule and applies assumptions on how the observatory will detect small bodies in the solar system.
According to researchers, Rubin is expected to expand known small-body populations by factors of 4-9x, delivering unprecedented troves of orbits, colors, and light curves. This data will enable scientists to update textbooks on solar system formation and vastly improve their ability to spot asteroids that could threaten Earth.
The observatory’s LSST will uncover new insights into the characteristics and history of the solar system’s building blocks, shedding light on Neptune’s past migration and the outer solar system’s history. It will also provide the first detailed view of Centaurs and the transition stage from Centaur to comet.
Rubin Observatory is scheduled to unveil its first spectacular imagery at its “First Look” event in June 2025. The team has made their resources, including simulated catalogs and animations, available as an open-source tool for researchers worldwide to refine their tools and be ready for the flood of LSST data that Rubin will generate.
With Rubin Observatory set to make its mark on our understanding of the solar system, scientists are eagerly anticipating the wealth of knowledge that will emerge from this groundbreaking research.
Source: https://phys.org/news/2025-06-rubin-observatory-millions-solar-vivid.html