World's largest digital camera likely to discover interstellar objects, millions of asteroids

New asteroids discovered by Vera C. Rubin Observatory

In about 10 hours of observations, NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory discovered 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids in our solar system, including seven near-Earth asteroids.

For a telescope designed to create the largest movie of the night sky, one small comet shooting through our solar system is tiny in the grand scheme of cosmic moments to come, but it’s a sign of the exciting things to come from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

The $571-million National Science Foundation and Department of Energy facility on top of the summit of Cerro Pachon in Chile is still in commissioning and set to begin the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time later this fall, creating the largest astronomical movie yet of the Southern Hemisphere. In June, the public got its first look at what the world’s largest digital camera can do with just a fraction of its viewing field. Over a few nights of viewing, Rubin discovered thousands of asteroids. 

NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a mountaintop in Chile, will revolutionize the way we explore the cosmos. Using the largest camera ever built, Rubin will repeatedly scan the sky for 10 years and create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition, time-lapse record of our Universe.

(RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/A. Pizarro D.)

So when the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was found in July by the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile, Rubin’s team looked, and sure enough, there was the interstellar wanderer. 

Interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS as seen by Rubin Observatory

The recently discovered interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS was spotted by the new NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. 

NSF Program Director for the Rubin Observatory Ed Ajhar said it’s too soon to tell how many interstellar objects Rubin might find. This is only the third ever object of its kind discovered and tracked through our solar system, all three within the past 20 years. 

If Rubin can find thousands of new asteroids during imaging over a few nights, what can it find during the course of a year?

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"Are we gonna see one of those a year with Rubin, or a few over its 10 years, or 30, or we don't know," Ajhar said. "It'll be interesting to see how many of those are discovered. If Rubin had been under normal operations still in the commissioning period, if it had been normal, it would have discovered this first."

Comet 3I/ATLAS as seen by the Rubin Observatory this summer.

(RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA / FOX Weather)

During the first few years, Rubin is likely to find millions of asteroids. 

In July, the observatory launched its first big educational product, the Orbitviewer app, a 3D interactive of Rubin data showing objects in the solar system. Ajhar said this tool can help teachers and professors provide important context.

In the meantime, the scientific world is waiting for more data from Rubin, but the wait will be worth it. The images and data released in June were taken from observations in November and December. A six-month processing and calibration time was a good first run to help the team learn what it takes to get Rubin's data into the hands of the public. 

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"It's just not releasing the data that comes off the telescope," Ajhar said. "You have to calibrate the data."

With the speed and power of this new science tool, it collects petabytes of data – there are more than 1,000 terabytes per petabyte – requiring machine-learning algorithms and data management to process it all. Rubin data releases could come yearly, but that may be hard in the first few years. Every other year is more likely, Ajhar estimated. 

"To do the bread-and-butter part of our job, as a scientist, the numbers that you send out have to really be well-measured, well-understood," Ajhar said. "And that takes a lot of time."