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NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science (DOE/SC), is captured here beginning its first night of on-sky observations with the LSST Camera as night settles across the sky. This long-exposure image gives us a great sense of the observatory’s scale, with three people on the gangway in the lower-right corner. Petr Horálek, NOIRLab Audiovisual Ambassador, captured this image during the on-sky commissioning of the camera on 15 April 2025.
The teal telescope mount for Rubin's Simonyi Survey Telescope was built in Spain and shipped in pieces to its current residence on Cerro Pachón in the foothills of the Chilean Andes. There, engineers and technicians reassembled the mount on the telescope pier inside the observatory over four years, partially amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The mount may look somewhat similar to other telescopes, but it incorporates a unique three-mirror design that makes the entire telescope much shorter and gives it a lower center of gravity. This unique design allows the mount to precisely hold and quickly move the mirrors and LSST Camera, the largest digital camera ever built. The weight of the mount, mirror, and camera totals 350 metric tons (386 US tons).
Photo Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/P. Horálek (Institute of Physics in Opava)
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