First Photons Arrive at Rubin in April 2025
Bild: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/W. O'Mullane, CC BY 4.0
Suspense and exuberance fill the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory summit control room on Cerro Pachón in this throwback photo as staff witness the Simonyi Survey Telescope, equipped with the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera, capturing its first image of the cosmos. Rubin Observatory is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE/SC). This major engineering milestone, often known as “first light” for new telescopes, was a long time in the making. Scientists began brainstorming what would one day become Rubin Observatory in the 1990s, originally calling it the Dark Matter Telescope. As the design of this groundbreaking telescope evolved, it became clear that it would not only advance the study of dark matter but also many other areas of astronomy and astrophysics. In 2010, this observatory was the top-ranked priority for ground-based astronomy in the National Academies' 2010 Decadal Survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics, which led to the approval of funding from the NSF and the DOE/SC. Construction of the observatory began on Cerro Pachón in Chile in 2015. After decades of planning, technological development, construction, and troubleshooting, Rubin Observatory celebrated the arrival of its first photons on 15 April 2025. The celebration in the Rubin control room shown in this NOIRLab Image of the Week was only one of many; accompanying celebrations were held in La Serena, Chile, at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, and NSF NOIRLab’s Tucson Headquarters. The excitement was then shared with the world during Rubin’s official First Look.
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