The Rubin Observatory’s alert system sent 800,000 pings on its first night
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s automated alert system is online and already bombarding astronomers with objects to observe in the night sky. The system went live publicly on Tuesday, February 24, and on its first night issued some 800,000 alerts about celebrating asteroids, supernovas and black holes. And that number is only expected to reach several million per night.
The observatory released the first images taken with its car-sized Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera in June last year. But researchers and astronomers were eagerly awaiting the launch of this system. Each night, the camera captures about 1,000 images and then compares them to a reference image taken when the telescope first came online. Differences are automatically reported and an algorithm can distinguish between potential supernovas and approaching asteroids to send alerts to interested parties, all in just a few minutes. This means scientists can quickly turn their attention to fleeting celestial events.
Fortunately, alerts aren’t all or nothing. They can be filtered by event type, brightness or even number of events in a given period. This should prevent researchers from being inundated with alerts as the Rubin Observatory accelerates the pace of discoveries.
