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February 26, 2026<\/p>\n
2 min read<\/p>\n
Add Us On Google<\/span>Add SciAm<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Rubin Observatory has started paging astronomers 800,000 times a night<\/p>\n Asteroids, exploding stars, and feasting black holes swarm in the first-ever batch of nightly alerts from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile<\/p>\n By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee Billings<\/span><\/p>\n NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory<\/p>\n Wake up, astronomers\u2014the universe is calling.<\/p>\n The astronomical observatory equipped with world\u2019s largest camera hit a key milestone on February 24, when a complex data-processing system pushed hundreds of thousands of alerts out to scientists eager to pore over its most exciting sightings.<\/p>\n The Vera C. Rubin Observatory began operations last year, capturing stunning, panoramic time-lapse views of the cosmos with ease. Rubin\u2019s first images, based on just 10 hours of observations, let space fans zoom seemingly forever into an overwhelmingly starry sky. But watchful astronomers were always awaiting the next step: the system that would automatically alert them to the most promising activity in the overhead sky amid the 1,000 or so enormous images that Rubin\u2019s telescope captures every night.<\/p>\n If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can detect everything that changes, moves and appears,\u201d said Yusra AlSayyad, an astronomer at Princeton University and Rubin\u2019s deputy associate director for data management, to Scientific American last summer. \u201cIt\u2019s way too much for one person to manually sift through and filter and monitor themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n READ MORE: Astronomers Brace for 10 Million Alerts a Night from Rubin Observatory<\/p>\n So even as they were designing and building the Rubin Observatory itself, scientists were also designing an alert system to help astronomers navigate the flood of data. As soon as the telescope began observations, the team started constructing a static reference image of the entire sky in impeccable detail.<\/p>\n Now the data processing systems that support the observatory are starting to automatically compare every new Rubin image to the corresponding section of that background template. The systems identify all of the differences, each of which is individually flagged. The algorithms can also distinguish between a potential supernova and a possible newfound asteroid, for example.<\/p>\n Alerting the scientific community is the final, crucial step. Astronomers\u2014as well as members of the public\u2014can sign up for notifications based on the type of sighting they\u2019re interested in and the brightness of the observation in question. And now that the alerts system has gone live, users receive a tiny, fuzzy image with some astronomical metadata of each observation that fits their criteria\u2014all just a couple of minutes after Rubin captures the original image.<\/p>\n On February 24, the first night of public access, the system created and distributed some 800,000 alerts, sending out notifications for swooping asteroids, exploding stars, flaring supermassive black holes and other transient celestial events. That number is expected to grow to millions of alerts every single night.<\/p>\n \u201cThe scale and speed of the alerts are unprecedented,\u201d said Hsin-Fang Chiang, a software developer at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which co-operates Rubin, in a press release. \u201cAfter generating hundreds of thousands of test alerts in the last few months, we are now able to say, within minutes, with each image, \u2018here is everything\u2019 and \u2018go.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n If you enjoyed this article, I\u2019d like to ask for your support. Scientific American<\/span> has served as an advocate for science and industry for 180 years, and right now may be the most critical moment in that two-century history.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been a Scientific American<\/span> subscriber since I was 12 years old, and it helped shape the way I look at the world. SciAm <\/span>always educates and delights me, and inspires a sense of awe for our vast, beautiful universe. I hope it does that for you, too.<\/p>\n If you subscribe to Scientific American<\/span>, you help ensure that our coverage is centered on meaningful research and discovery; that we have the resources to report on the decisions that threaten labs across the U.S.; and that we support both budding and working scientists at a time when the value of science itself too often goes unrecognized.<\/p>\n In return, you get essential news, captivating podcasts, brilliant infographics, can’t-miss newsletters, must-watch videos, challenging games, and the science world’s best writing and reporting. You can even gift someone a subscription.<\/p>\n There has never been a more important time for us to stand up and show why science matters. I hope you\u2019ll support us in that mission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February 26, 2026 2 min read Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm Rubin Observatory has started paging astronomers 800,000 times a night Asteroids, exploding stars, and feasting black holes swarm in the first-ever batch of nightly alerts from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile By Meghan Bartels edited by Lee Billings NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45318,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[4341,446,62,23364,61,2685,1862],"class_list":{"0":"post-45317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-astronomers","9":"tag-night","10":"tag-observatory","11":"tag-paging","12":"tag-rubin","13":"tag-started","14":"tag-times"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45317\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}On supporting science journalism<\/h2>\n
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