This summer marks an exciting turning point, not just for our Institute, but for astronomy as a whole: after years of anticipation, the construction of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is finally complete, and the first incredible images have been shared with the world!
It’s amazing to think that this project started almost 20 years ago, and I’m so proud that Seattle and the University of Washington have remained leaders in its design, development, and now discovery with LSST. I hope you will join us in Kane Hall on June 26 as we share these images with our community, and tell a few of the stories of the brilliant and hard-working people who have made this dream a reality.
The summer also marks a turning point for the leadership of DiRAC. I am deeply honored to step in to the role as Director of the DiRAC Institute this year. I joined DiRAC 8 years ago a Postdoctoral Fellow, drawn by the promise of new datasets and a collaborative environment where wild or even silly ideas could find a home. Now as a professor and Director, my goal is to take the scientific momentum built by Andy Connolly and Mario Juric, and support this amazing group of students, developers, and researchers into an era of unprecedented discovery. These are uncertain times for science. The broader funding and academic landscape is rocky, and it can feel harder than ever to plan for the long term. But if these past 8 years have taught me anything, it’s that imagination, persistence, and compassion are powerful force multipliers. Whether we’re tracking near-Earth asteroids, developing novel algorithms, or chasing the weird and wonderful outliers in our data, we thrive when we let curiosity lead the way.
I am so grateful that our community has continued to support us, funding a 4th year of our Summer Research Prize program, and new generations of Postdoctoral Fellows at DiRAC. So here’s to the coming decade of discoveries with Rubin/LSST. Here’s to students asking bold questions from our data. And here’s to finding joy – even a little absurdity – in the vast puzzle of the cosmos.
Thank you for being part of this journey with us, and keep looking up.
Rubin Observatory has released its first look at the night sky—and the images are nothing short of spectacular. Visit the Rubin Observatory to see and learn more.
On Monday morning, June 23, 2025, we gathered in a full UW Planetarium to witness the release of Rubin Observatory’s first images—an extraordinary milestone that marks years of effort and dedication from teams across UW and DiRAC. It was a powerful moment of recognition for the many individuals who have contributed to making this achievement possible.
As our colleague and Rubin Director, Prof. Željko Ivezić, announced the discovery of the first asteroids identified in this new dataset, we applauded the outstanding work of our Solar System team. The variable stars revealed today offer an early look at the groundbreaking, real-time discoveries that will soon be enabled by the Alert and Data Management systems led here at UW, along with the Time Domain Analysis group. The search for dark matter remains one of Rubin’s most ambitious scientific goals, and even today, we are already engaged in spirited discussions about how to interpret the rich detail in these first images.
This milestone marks the beginning of a new era in astronomy, as Rubin prepares to launch the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the most ambitious sky survey ever undertaken. To celebrate this exciting moment, we invite you to join the local UW Rubin team on Thursday, June 26th at 7:00 PM for a special event featuring a free public lecture.
Come be part of the celebration and learn more about the science and people behind this groundbreaking project.
This milestone represents over two decades of dedication and collaboration from the global Rubin community. We are especially proud to honor the University of Washington Rubin Team, whose leadership and involvement as one of four founding institutions, have been instrumental in bringing this vision to life.
The DiRAC Institute is thrilled to host this event, celebrating UW’s pivotal role and inviting the Seattle community to share in the excitement of discoveries to come.
Photograph by Marcos Zegers
This is more than an astronomy event — it’s a celebration of human curiosity, collaboration, and imagination. Whether you’re a student, researcher, space enthusiast, or simply someone who looks up at the night sky in wonder, you’re invited to be a part of this historic moment.
Speakers
Prof. Zeljko Ivezic: Professor Željko Ivezić of the University of Washington has been associated with Rubin Observatory since its inception in the early 2000’s (then called LSST Project). As LSST Project Scientist from 2004 to 2021, Željko has chaired the LSST Project Science Team and played a major role in both internal and external reviews of the project. In 2022, he became Director of the Rubin Observatory Construction Project. Scientifically, Željko’s expertise is in survey astronomy in a variety of fields ranging from solar system science to studies of the structure of the Milky Way and cosmology.
Prof. Mario Juric: Prof. Mario Juric is the co-director of UW’s Institute for Data-intensive Research in Astrophysics and Cosmology (DiRAC) and Principal Investigator (PI) of UW’s contribution to Rubin Observatory construction and operations. He has been involved with Rubin since 2008, including defining Rubin’s data products and leading the multi-institutional Rubin Data Management team through R&D and early construction. Prof. Juric’s team at UW is responsible for scanning the ever-changing sky with Rubin: from detecting the most energetic explosions in the Universe, to discovering asteroids that could potentially be on a collision course with the Earth.
Prof. Andy Connolly: Professor Andy Connolly is the Director of UW’s eScience Institute, and a professor in the Department of Astronomy. Professor Connolly studies cosmology and the formation of structure within our universe using large astronomical surveys ranging from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey to the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). He has been involved in the design, construction, and commissioning of Rubin since 2006 and currently works on the Active Optics System that ensures that the images from the Rubin Observatory will be sharp and clear. He leads LINCC Frameworks, a program supported by Schmidt Sciences to develop the software and tools that will make science discoveries possible at the scale of the Rubin data. Beyond his scientific research, Professor Connolly is interested in using technology to increase access to scientific data and to improve the educational experiences of students.
The Simonyi Survey Telescope now has its mirrors and a camera in place. (Credit: Rubin Observatory)
About Vera C. Rubin Observatory
High in the Chilean Andes, the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a next-generation facility named after astronomer Vera Rubin, whose work provided key evidence for dark matter. Jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, Rubin is set to transform our understanding of the Universe.
Its 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope, featuring the world’s largest digital camera, will scan the southern sky every few nights for ten years—creating the most detailed time-lapse of the night sky ever captured.
Rubin data will deepen our understanding of dark energy and dark matter, trace the history of our solar system, detect asteroids and new worlds, and uncover cosmic phenomena we’ve yet to imagine.
UW DiRAC Institute
The DiRAC Institute is an interdisciplinary research center at UW focused on data-intensive astronomy. Established in 2017 with founding support from the Charles and Lisa Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences, and additional support from Janet and Lloyd Frink, NSF, WRF, U.S. Department of Energy, B612 Foundation, Heising-Simons, and Breakthrough Listen – the DiRAC Institute will help us make sense of the discoveries emerging from Rubin and the next generation of telescopes.
In preparation for the Rubin Observatory’s upcoming ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), we helped develop Sorcha, a survey simulator tuned for LSST. Sorcha models the detection and discovery of a model solar system population by a model Rubin Observatory, allowing us to conduct synthetic ‘test’ surveys with different conditions and environments.
Researchers from the UW and Queen’s University Belfast believe that knowledge of the objects in the solar system will expand exponentially when a new telescope comes online later this year. Shown here is a visualization of what astronomers predict the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s LSST Camera will see, including asteroids and other objects in the sky.Sorcha.space/University of Washington
The first major result with Sorcha are the predictions of a high-fidelity simulation of our best current expectations for LSST against our best current understanding of the solar system. We find that Rubin will observe 5.4 million asteroids including millions with sufficient data for precise color fits and hundreds of thousands with shapes revealed through their rotational light curves.
Even more exciting than these predictions is Sorcha’s potential as a tool for debiasing — applying the measured survey efficiency to a model population, allowing for fair comparisons between Rubin’s real observationally-biased discovery catalogs and theorists’ models of the intrinsic distributions of solar system object parameters.
It was 20 years ago that I first heard rumblings about a new, super power, ambitious survey telescope that could capture a “movie of the sky”. This idea became the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, with its unique Simonyi Survey Telescope, which will conduct the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Today we got our first look at what this new era of astronomy will be, with the first images being released from Rubin. You can explore them now on the Skyviewer site!
DiRAC’s James Davenport in the UW Planetarium for the Rubin First Look event.
The very idea of this telescope has guided our work for a long time. DiRAC itself was created from the growing need in the “Rubin Era” to combine advances in computing technology with domain expertise of seasoned astronomers. Today we truly move in to this new Era, and nothing in our work will ever be the same again.
The DiRAC team watches the first asteroid discoveries being announced by Rubin/LSST
It was a joy to watch with a packed house in the UW Planetarium this morning, as these images were released to the world. This moment is a massive accomplishment for so many people here at UW and DiRAC. As our friend and colleague, Prof. Željko Ivezić, was announcing the first asteroids found in this data, we cheered for our incredible Solar System team that made these discoveries possible. The variable stars announced today are the first glimpse at the incredible real-time discovery that will be made available by the Alert and Data Management teams we host here, and the Time Domain Analysis group. The search for Dark Matter is a key goal for Rubin, and already today we’re having excited hallway discussions about how to interpret the fine details in the images we saw…
DiRAC’s Zeljko Ivezic describing the discoveries that will come from Rubin/LSST, while the DiRAC team watches
So now the real fun begins! In many ways this marks the beginning of “Phase 2” for DiRAC, as we enter the Era of real data from LSST/Rubin. Please join us Thursday evening in Kane Hall as we tell more of the stories from the past 20 years at UW Astronomy and the Seattle astronomy community, and the excitement building for the next 10 years at DiRAC.
