Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a large-aperture wide-field, ground-based telescope, under construction on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón in northern Chile. For the first 10 years of operation, it will perform the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), using the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera and the Simonyi Survey Telescope. It will survey half the sky every few nights in six optical bands ranging from 320 to 1050 nanometers. Its camera, which is made up of three refractive lenses and a 9.6-square-degree field of view, will be the largest digital camera ever constructed.

SLAC leads the development of the LSST Camera. When complete, the camera will produce a data set that will offer insight into a wide range of pressing questions about the nature of dark energy and dark matter, the formation of the Milky Way, the properties of small bodies in the solar system, the trajectories of potentially hazardous asteroids and the possible existence of undiscovered explosive phenomena.

SLAC's participation in the project is part of the research program of the SLAC-Stanford Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology.

Visit SLAC's LSST Camera website »

Additional information about LSST can be found on the project homepage.