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.
Welcome to 2025 and to a new installment of our newsletter.
And what a year it’s been so far! In October of last year, after almost two decades of research, development, and construction, we welcomed the first engineering light with the test camera at the Rubin Observatory. The first image, unveiled at the January American Astronomical Society’s meeting by Rubin Construction director and UW DiRAC Faculty Prof. Zeljko Ivezic, shows the potential of the observatory and foreshadows the next decade of discovery. We’re now working towards the first light with Rubin’s main camera, and marching towards the end of this year when Rubin will embark on its 10 year mission to map the Universe in both space and time.
Read more about Rubin, events at the Institute, profiles of our excellent DiRAC team members, as well as how our Prof. Nora Shipp won a Scialog Collaborative Innovation Award, in the main part of this newsletter.
But before I let you go, there’s one more thing… Following nearly five years of being at the helm of DiRAC, it’s a privilege to welcome Prof. Jim Davenport as the new incoming Director! Jim is Research Associate Professor in the department of Astronomy, and has been DiRAC’s Associate Director for nearly all of my tenure. His impact on the institute cannot be underestimated: from revitalizing our time-domain program to leading numerous outreach and education initiatives — including the highly successful DiRAC Undergraduate Summer Prize program.
As I prepare to take a Rubin-focused sabbatical next year, I’m incredibly grateful to Jim for agreeing to step up and take on this responsibility. As we finally enter the age of Rubin, there’s no one better I can imagine to lift the Institute to new heights!
Onwards and upwards,
Mario Jurić DiRAC Director Professor, Department of Astronomy
Rubin Observatory Construction will be completed in about half a year: LSST will start before the end of 2025!
Many major milestones were accomplished in 2024, with first on-sky images obtained with an engineering camera demonstrating that the Simony Survey Telescope (SST) is operational. In early March, the main LSST camera was attached to the telescope and we anticipate the first on-sky images, the so-called First Photon milestone, in April.
Going back to the accomplishments from 2024, the primary/tertiary mirror (M1M3) for SST was coated with a layer of silver in April 2024 and thus prepared for final integration with the rest of the telescope. The last major piece of equipment, the LSST Camera, was shipped from SLAC to Chile in May 2024. The successful transport of the camera and supporting equipment and tools, (3 large containers and 47 crates) to Chile, first by Boeing 747 plane from San Francisco to Santiago and then by 9 trucks to the Observatory, was a major step towards the completion of the Rubin Observatory.
Rubin’s Simony Survey Telescope was fully integrated for the first time in early October 2024, with all three mirrors and an engineering (commissioning) camera installed. After 10 years of intensive construction of the Rubin Observatory, and 20 years since the project began, the first images of the night sky were obtained with engineering camera on October 24, 2024! In parallel with hardware integration and commissioning, software pipelines are being completed and tested using extant and Rubin Auxiliary Telescope data, as well as these commissioning image data. In particular, the Rubin group at DiRAC is leading the Alert Pipeline testing and commissioning.
After using this telescope configuration to image the sky until mid-December 2024, the Rubin team removed the 144-megapixel engineering camera and installed the final science component: the car-sized 3,200-megapixel LSST camera. We except the very first on-sky images with the LSST Camera in April, the first science quality images by early summer, the completion of the construction project by the end of September, and the start of 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time before the end of 2025.
As Rubin Observatory Construction is nearing its completion, the Rubin Operations Team is preparing for the start of LSST and relentless sky surveying, while several thousand members of eight Rubin Science Collaborations are finalizing their preparations and tools for data analysis. DiRAC’s members are playing a major role in these preparations and positioning themselves to partake in the rich harvest of science results to be soon enabled by LSST data!
Prof. Željko Ivezić
Director of Rubin Construction
Professor of Astronomy, University of Washington
LSST Camera Arrives at Rubin Observatory in Chile
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Simonyi Survey Telescope will make use of an 8.4-meter primary mirror and an 3.5-meter secondary mirror. Note the size of the support structure compared with the size of the workers on the platform. (Credit: Rubin Observatory / NSF / AURA / F. Munoz Arancibia)
NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Installs LSST Camera on Telescope
The Vera Rubin Observatory recently completed an extensive testing run using its engineering test camera (ComCam), marking a significant milestone toward full operations. Beginning as a dream in 1998, and under construction since 2015, this exciting moment marks the first time Rubin has observed the night sky. This crucial seven-week testing phase, which ran from late October to mid-December 2024, utilized ComCam—a smaller version containing just nine of the 189 CCD sensors that will be present in the final 3.2-gigapixel LSST Camera.
Members of the DiRAC Institute—Andrew Connolly, John Franklin Crenshaw, Bryce Kalmbach, and Chris Suberlak—played a central role in the testing, working on-site in Chile throughout the session. Their work focused primarily on Rubin’s Active Optics System (AOS), which maintains optimal image quality across the telescope’s 9.6 deg2 field of view by analyzing wavefront sensor data in real-time, calculating necessary adjustments, and controlling the positioning actuators on the primary and secondary mirrors despite environmental challenges like temperature fluctuations and mechanical stress. Successful operation of this complex system is necessary for Rubin to achieve its lofty science goals.
“35 out of the 52 nights of the engineering run featured at least one of the DiRAC team members on the summit. During one of the observing nights, Suberlak gave a quick online tour of the summit control room, answering questions via livestream for DiRAC guests gathered at the UW Planetarium. Much of the night’s work focused on implementing and testing new control software settings and evaluating how pipeline improvements affected image quality. These tests required close collaboration between AOS test scientists, observing specialists, and other team members, who provided rapid feedback to debug software and hardware issues.
No two nights felt dull or repetitive. One evening, a series of images revealed an unusual light pattern—something the team had never seen before. After two trips to the telescope dome, they discovered the culprit: a light source beneath the main 8.2 m mirror (M1/M3) had been left on due to a low-level software bug. On another occasion, thick clouds covered nearly the entire sky, and the weather forecast predicted slim chances of capturing useful images. Yet, as the night progressed, the sky unexpectedly cleared. Not only did the team manage to take images, but the quality exceeded expectations—better than on many other nights—thanks in part to the AOS feedback loop.
We eagerly anticipate what the commissioning of the LSST Camera (LsstCam) will bring!
Andy Connolly and Bryce Kalmbach (on zoom) after setting a new record for delivered image resolution
Chris Suberlak and the team in the control room
Rubin Observatory at sunset Credit: John Franklin Crenshaw
John Franklin Crenshaw and Colin Slater, with the rest of the summit team, on the very last night of ComCam Commissioning
The sumit control room
John Franklin Crenshaw, after opening the dome for a night of testing
Base Control Room, incl. Josh Myers, Will Sutherland of the AOS team Credit: Chris Suberlak
Summer flowers on Cerro Pachon with the Simonyi Telescope (left) and the Auxiliary Telescope on top of the calibration hill (right) Credit: Chris Suberlak
Commissioning team watching the sunset, with Moon and Venus Credit: by Chris Suberlak
Chris Suberlak next to the M1/M3 surrogate, showing the scale of the main mirror
Orion rising over Vera Rubin observatory Credit: Chris Suberlak
Nora Shipp, Assistant Professor, University of Washington
Nora Shipp, UW assistant professor of astronomy, was part of one of eight interdisciplinary teams awarded the Collaborative Innovation Award in the first year of Scialog: Early Science with the LSST.
This initiative, launched by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, is a three-year program designed to support early-career scientists as they prepare to utilize data from the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
“Scialog has been a great opportunity to make connections with scientists across the field of astronomy to brainstorm new ideas for taking advantage of the unprecedented data that will soon be provided by the LLST ,” said Shipp.
Shipp’s proposal brings together researchers to study stars and dark matter — not just in the Milky Way, but also in smaller galaxies. By using the LSST to reveal the faint outer regions of these galaxies, the research will help us to better understand the universe’s creation and the limits of how galaxies form.
Scialog, which is short for “science + dialog, “is a collaborative program launched by RCSA in 2010. It’s designed to accelerate breakthroughs by fostering a network of creative scientists across disciplines and encouraging intensive discussions on scientific themes of global importance.
As part of this initiative, the conference brought together an expert group of scientists and facilitators, including Eric Bellm, research assocaite professor of astronomy and DiRAC Institute Fellow, to guide the discussions.
On March 9th, a group of astronomers from the University of Washington’s DiRAC Institute met in downtown Seattle to share their knowledge and excitement for the future of discovery at Emerald City Comic Con (ECCC). For the last two years, James Davenport (Astronomy professor and DiRAC Director) has convened these “Interstellar Insights” discussion panels of astronomers at ECCC. These outreach events help scientists connect directly with enthusiastic members of the public, reaching folks of all ages!
Panel members from DiRAC at ECCC 2025
This year our panel focused on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a remarkable facility that will go online in a few months, and that members of UW Astronomy and DiRAC have been helping build for the last 2 decades. Rubin will “bring the night sky to life” with a powerful 10-year survey of the sky, tracking everything from asteroids in our solar system to supernova at the edge of the cosmos. Our panel shared the challenge and opportunity for bringing this amazing machine online and making discoveries across the cosmos in real time.
Promo image for the DiRAC panel at Emerald City Comic Con in March 2025
These expert panels draw crowds of over 100 people, and we receive thoughtful questions from adults and children alike. One fun item we shared this year was a new full-scale build of the Rubin Observatory in Minecraft, allowing anyone to take a virtual tour of this amazing event from the comfort of their living room! (You can download this build and tour it yourself!)
A full-scale recreation of the Rubin Observatory built in Minecraft, shared at ECCC 2025
We hope to continue these events around Seattle and the Pacific Northwest for many years, sharing the wonder of the Universe with everyone, as Rubin Observatory goes online and beyond!
At DiRAC Institute, we are fortunate to have a talented group of astronomers whose work is expanding our understanding of the universe. From exploring the outer solar system and developing algorithms for asteroid impact prevention to advocating for cleaner skies and advancing the search for asteroids, their research is making significant contributions to the field of astronomy. We’re excited to share a glimpse into their work and the unique projects they’re leading, brought to you by the dedicated team of journalists from the UW News Lab: Amelia Kim, Dany Villarreal, Cassie Diamond, Pei Xu and Cameron Delfin.
Here are a few profiles of our researchers, showcasing their areas of expertise and contributions to the field.
