Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory in Coquimbo Region, Chile. Its main task is to conduct an astronomical survey of the southern sky every few nights, creating a ten-year time-lapse record, termed the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (also abbreviated LSST). The observatory is located on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón, a 2,682-meter-high (8, 799 ft) mountain in northern Chile, alongside the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes. The base facility is located about 100 kilometres (62 miles) away from the observatory by road, in La Serena. The observatory is named for Vera Rubin, an American astronomer who pioneered discoveries about galactic rotation rates. It is a joint initiative of the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science and is operated jointly by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The Rubin Observatory houses the Simonyi Survey Telescope, a wide-field reflecting telescope with an 8.4-meter primary mirror. It uses a variant of three-mirror anastigmat to deliver sharp images over a 3.5-degree-diameter field of view. Images are recorded by a 3.2-gigapixel charge-coupled device imaging (CCD) camera, the largest camera yet constructed. Rubin saw first light in June 2025 and started full sur

Observatory data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).