The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Automated Alert System is online and already providing astronomers with things to look for in the night sky. The system went live publicly on Tuesday, February 24 and issued nearly 800,000 alerts about asteroids, supernovae and black holes on the first night. And this number is expected to reach several lakhs per night.
The observatory released the first images taken with its car-sized Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera in June last year. But researchers and astrologers are eagerly waiting for the launch of this system. Each night, the camera captures about 1,000 images and then compares them with a reference image taken when the telescope first came online. Differences are automatically flagged, and an algorithm can distinguish between potential supernovae and approaching asteroids, sending alerts to interested parties within minutes. This means scientists can immediately focus their attention on fleeting astronomical events.
Thankfully, alerts aren’t all or nothing. They can be filtered by event type, brightness, or even the number of events within a certain time period. This will help keep researchers from being overwhelmed with alerts as the Rubin Observatory increases the rate of discoveries.
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