Ground-breaking time-lapse will film Space for a decade

UK astronomers are celebrating after the camera opened on the longest, most ambitious time-lapse movie of all time!

Described as “one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken”, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time will help us solve some of the Universe’s biggest mysteries – such as the nature of dark energy, and the evolution of the solar system.

For the next ten years, the LSST will take a time-lapse video of the entire southern sky to create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition record of our Universe.

It is a milestone that the UK astronomy community has spent more than a decade preparing for, including scientists at LJMU’s Astrophysics Research Institute, one of the key partners of a 36-institution consortium funded by a multi-million-pound investment by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).  

During its 10-year survey, the LSST - using the Vera C. Rubin telescope in Chile - will catalogue an estimated 17 billion stars, 20 billion galaxies, and millions of events that change in the sky – more objects than there are living people on earth.

UK science innovation

As part of the UK contribution, key innovations are expanding the scientific reach of the LSST. LJMU under Professor Chris Collins is running a project, led by the University of Hertfordshire, to significantly enhance LSST's ability to study the evolution of the observable Universe. The work focuses on data analysis in the low surface brightness regime – those astronomical objects or regions that are extremely faint and largely undetectable in past surveys. And they say the low surface brightness regime contains more material than the bright regime and has barely been explored!

Other UK projects

• At the University of Southampton, a team of astronomers has developed image-processing software that will uncover those distant and dust-shrouded galaxies and black holes that might be missed using LSST data. They will also fuse together Rubin data with infrared data from the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) to allow some of the most distant objects to be found.
• A team at the University of Exeter has developed software to identify reliable counterparts to Rubin images created by existing surveys. By cross-matching different datasets, the software enhances the scientific capabilities of the LSST.

Professor Grahame Blair, Executive Director of Programmes at STFC, said: "This is a new era in astronomy and one of the most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken.

“The discoveries made over the next decade will inspire future generations, deepen our understanding of the cosmos, and reinforce the UK's position at the forefront of astronomical research."

IMAGE: This 1.7-gigapixel image of a field of stars in the constellation Lupus showcases the unprecedented view of the Universe that NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory gives us. Equipped with the LSST Camera — the largest digital camera in the world — Rubin combines a wide view of the sky with the ability to detect extremely faint objects. With this capability, Rubin can reveal details of the cosmos across an enormous range of scales, from distant galaxies, to individual stars, to the wispy clouds of dust spread throughout our galaxy.

The faint, glowing clouds spread across this image are galactic cirrus: clouds of interstellar gas and dust that can be seen in the foreground of the Milky Way. Rubin’s ability to capture scenes like this in unmatched detail will open new windows into the structure of our galaxy and the Universe beyond it.

Credit:

NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA