The Legacy Survey of Space and Time Begins
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time Begins
The Rubin Observatory begins capturing the largest cosmic film ever made. Researchers from Federico II are playing a leading role alongside their colleagues at INAF
In late June 2026, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory officially launched the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST): a groundbreaking decade-long survey campaign to create the most comprehensive movie ever produced of the southern sky.
From Cerro Pachón in Chile, Rubin will now scan the entire sky every few nights using its 3,200-megapixel camera, the world’s largest digital camera. A new detailed image will be captured approximately every 40 seconds, generating up to 10 terabytes of data and up to 7 million brightness variation alerts each night.
Tests have already demonstrated Rubin’s extraordinary discovery capability: in just a month and a half, more than 11,000 previously unknownasteroids were discovered , including 33 near-Earth objects and 380 trans-Neptunian objects.
Over the next decade, Rubin will revisit every point in the sky approximately 700 times, providing the deep, time-rich datasets needed to study transient phenomena, Solar System objects, the evolution of galaxies, and the fundamental mysteries of dark energy and dark matter. Certain regions of the sky, known as Deep Drilling Fields, will be observed approximately 20,000 times over the course of the ten years. The final archive—containing billions of objects with trillions of measurements—will be released to the global community, opening up unprecedented opportunities for discovery for both professional researchers and the public.
Italy is deeply involved in this international initiative through the Rubin-LSST Italy program, led by the National Institute for Astrophysics. As part of this initiative, researchers from the “Ettore Pancini” Department of Physics at Federico II are contributing in key scientific and technological roles: Professor Massimo Brescia serves as the national coordinator for Italy’s participation in LSST, while Professors Maurizio Paolillo (Federico II) and Nicola Napolitano (SSM/Federico II) coordinate “in-kind” scientific projects that ensure Italy’s participation in LSST through the use of Italian telescopes, such as the VST, which was built right here in Naples.
For real-time information on the status of LSST, visit: https://rubinobservatory.org/