A groundbreaking observatory in Chile is poised to rewrite the history of our solar system, revealing millions of new celestial objects in dazzling detail — and much faster than ever imagined.
Key Points at a Glance
- The Rubin Observatory will soon begin mapping the solar system in unprecedented detail.
- Using a 3.2-gigapixel camera, it will detect millions of new asteroids, comets, and minor planets.
- Sorcha, a new simulation software, predicts what the observatory will discover.
- The discoveries will shed light on the origins and evolution of our planetary neighborhood.
High in the Chilean Andes, on the Cerro Pachón ridge, something extraordinary is about to happen. Later this year, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory — a cutting-edge facility equipped with the world’s largest digital camera — will switch on and begin a decade-long journey into the heart of our solar system. But this isn’t just about clearer images. It’s about a radical transformation in how we understand our cosmic neighborhood.
The Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, an engineering marvel boasting 3.2 gigapixels and a 9.6 square-degree field of view, will capture the entire visible sky every few nights. That’s roughly 45 times the area of a full moon per shot. With its “wide-fast-deep” survey strategy, Rubin will generate a nightly deluge of 20 terabytes of data. What emerges from this torrent will be a kind of technicolor movie of the solar system — continuously updated, impossibly detailed, and rich with discovery.
In a series of new studies led by astronomers from Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Washington, researchers unveiled just how much Rubin is expected to change the game. The studies introduce Sorcha, an open-source, end-to-end simulation software that models the observatory’s capabilities and offers predictions about what we might find. It’s the first tool of its kind that integrates Rubin’s observing schedule with the most advanced models of the current solar system.
“It tells us what Rubin will discover and lets us know how to interpret it,” explains Dr. Meg Schwamb, lead researcher from Queen’s University. “Our knowledge of the solar system’s small bodies is about to expand exponentially and rapidly.”
And by “small bodies,” the scientists mean asteroids, comets, and other minor planets — remnants from the dawn of the solar system, over 4.5 billion years ago. These objects are more than space debris; they are fossils, preserving clues about how the solar system formed and evolved. They could even reveal how water and organic materials were delivered to Earth, setting the stage for life itself.
One stunning prediction from the simulations: Rubin could double the number of known asteroids — currently around 1.5 million — in less than a year. Over its full operational span, it could increase our inventory of these bodies by a factor of four to nine. And it won’t just find them — Rubin will track their orbits, analyze their light curves, and observe their surfaces in multiple optical filters, revealing never-before-seen color data.
“It will be like going from black-and-white television to brilliant color,” said Joe Murtagh, a doctoral researcher involved in the study.
To handle the enormity of this challenge, Sorcha becomes indispensable. Created by the international team, this simulator ingests Rubin’s projected schedules and models the detection process, compensating for observational biases and limitations. With it, researchers worldwide can prepare their analysis pipelines ahead of time and be ready for the avalanche of data once Rubin goes live.
“Sorcha is a game changer,” says Siegfried Eggl from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “It allows us to correct for Rubin’s complex observing patterns and get a clearer picture of the solar system’s history — where planets formed, and how they migrated over billions of years.”
One of the most profound implications of Rubin’s capabilities is in planetary defense. With better data, astronomers will be far more effective at identifying near-Earth objects that could pose a risk to our planet — and perhaps, one day, deflecting them.
“With this data, we’ll be able to update the textbooks of solar system formation and vastly improve our ability to spot — and potentially deflect — the asteroids that could threaten Earth,” said Mario Juric, UW astronomer and one of the project leads.
Rubin Observatory is scheduled to release its first spectacular images during a “First Look” event on June 23, offering a tantalizing preview of what’s to come. As science operations commence later this year, the stage is set for a once-in-a-generation revolution in our understanding of the solar system — one that begins with a telescope, a camera, and a flood of light from deep space.
Source: University of Washington
