From First Light to Feature Film: Preparing Rubin to Record a Decade-long Cosmic Show

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a high mountaintop in Chile, is equipped with an 8.4-meter primary mirror and the largest digital camera in the world, the LSST Camera. Rubin Observatory will soon begin an unprecedented 10-year survey that will repeatedly scan the entire Southern sky every three to four nights. This 10-year color “movie” of the cosmos will help unravel the mysteries of a broad swath of astronomy and cosmology, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, galaxy formation and evolution, exoplanets and our own Solar System. In this talk, I will introduce Rubin Observatory and its broad science goals and highlight one of the earliest astronomical results produced by the Rubin team: observations of the third known interstellar object, 3I/ATLAS. I will also share my exciting experience of working hands-on at Rubin Observatory in Chile for three months this past year getting LSST Camera ready for its big survey debut.

Speaker: Theo Schutt, Stanford University

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