One of the newest observatories on Earth is expected to generate up to 7 million alerts each night about asteroids, glowing black holes and cosmic explosions.

On the first night of tracking the skies, 800,000 alerts had already been issued.

The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory is located in northern Chile. largest digital camera on earth.

The first alerts recording events in the night sky will be released in late February 2026, and astronomers expect to eventually generate up to 7 million alerts per night.

Astronomers say this is the beginning of a new era of real-time observations of the night sky on Earth.

Rubin’s warning against real-time cosmic events

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory issued 800,000 alerts to astronomers on the night of February 24, 2026.

These alerts drew astronomers’ attention to new asteroids and exploding stars (as they are known). supernova), active galactic nuclei (Shining supermassive black hole A variable star whose brightness changes over time.

Astronomers say the initiation of the scientific alert is one of the final milestones before the Rubin Observatory begins its Space-Time Legacy Survey.

LSST will see Rubin scan the Southern Hemisphere skies every night for 10 years, looking for visible changes in the sky.

This will provide a time-lapse record of the changing universe, which is expected to lead to many discoveries.

In LSST’s first year, Rubin is predicted to take more images of celestial objects than all other optical observatories combined throughout human history.

A record of the changing universe

“NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory connects scientists to a vast and continuous flow of information, allowing them to track unfolding cosmic events, from the most explosive to the faintest and most ephemeral,” said Luca Rizzi, program director for research infrastructure at NSF.

“The discoveries reported in these alerts reflect the power of the NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory as an astrophysical tool and the importance of continued support from the federal government,” said Kathy Turner, program manager for the High Energy Physics Program in the DOE Office of Science.

“Rubin Observatory’s groundbreaking capabilities are uncovering undiscovered treasures in astrophysics and expanding scientists’ access to our ever-changing universe.”

When you point a powerful telescope like Rubin’s at the sky, it becomes clear that the universe is constantly changing and transforming in dramatic and chaotic ways.

Rubin’s alerts reveal new light sources, changes in star brightness, and moving objects.

Scientists say Rubin’s presence will increase the chances of catching supernovae before they reach their peak and discovering asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth.

It could also help discover more interstellar comets, like 3I/ATLAS, as they pass through our solar system.

Scientists can then use other telescopes to make follow-up observations.

“The Rubin Alert System is designed to enable anyone to identify interesting astronomical phenomena with sufficient notice and quickly obtain time-critical follow-up observations,” said Eric Bellm, Alert Production Pipeline Group Lead for Rubin Data Management at NSF NOIRLab and the University of Washington.

“Being able to detect 10 terabytes of images each night in real time required years of innovation in image processing algorithms, databases, and data orchestration. I can’t wait to see the exciting science that comes from these data.”

How Rubin tracks changes in the sky

Rubin Observatory compares each image it takes to a template image created by combining previous images of the same area. This allows you to see how the image has changed over time.

Any change could alert astronomers and reveal supernovae, variable stars, active galactic nuclei, and solar system objects.

Rubin will photograph a new area of ​​the sky every 40 seconds and send the data to a facility in California, USA, for processing.

An automated system compares it to a template created from previous images of the same area.

“The scale and speed of the alert is unprecedented,” said Hsin-Fang Chiang, a SLAC software developer who leads data processing operations at USDF.

“After generating hundreds of thousands of test alerts over the past few months, we can now say to each image, ‘Here’s everything,’ and ‘Let’s go,’ within minutes.”

Rubin is expected to generate so many alerts that scientists will rely on a network of intelligent software platforms called brokers that use machine learning.

“The extraordinary number of alerts Rubin generates presents exciting challenges for both astronomers and software engineers,” said Tom Matheson, interim director of the Community Science Data Center (CSDC).

“The Brokers team has built a system that works at scale and quickly so that scientists can find all the objects of interest and things they’ve never seen before.”

“The revolutionary thing about Rubin is its ability to capture both rapid changes and long-term evolution of the sky,” says Rosalia Bonito, a researcher at the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Palermo, Italy, and co-chair of the Rubin LSST Transient and Variable Stars (TVS) scientific cooperation.

“For example, young stars are highly dynamic and can experience sudden bursts of brightness due to falling material. These phenomena are often short-lived and can be easily missed by scientists if they aren’t continuously monitoring them. With Rubin, we can detect these changes as they are happening right now, and even track the evolution of stars over a decade.”