Rubin Observatory launches real-time monitoring of the sky with thousands of alerts

February 25, 2026 | UW News

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory sits on its mountain peak in Chile during observation activities in April 2025. The observatory will soon begin real-time nightly monitoring of the entire Southern Hemisphere sky. Photo: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)

On Feb. 24, astronomers’ computers around the world lit up with a deluge of cosmic notifications — 800,000 alerts about new asteroids in our solar system, exploding stars across the galaxy and other noteworthy changes in the night sky.