My Favorite Bonkers LSST Facts

The Legacy Survey of Space and time (LSST) is a planned 10 year survey using the Vera C. Rubin observatory. The start of this survey is expected to be in mid-2025, but a more up to date schedule can be found at ls.st/dates.

This survey will provide us with a truly impressive dataset with which to learn about the universe. Some of my favorite lsst numbers are:

• During the first year of operations LSST will catalog more unique objects than all previous astronomical observations combined.
• Each night we expect 10^6 astrophysical trainsients to be detected and alerts to be sent out within 60s taking an image.

For the full 10 year survey we expect to catalog:

• 20 x 10^9 galaxies (1% of galaxies in observable universe)
• 17 x 10^9 resolved stars
• 10 x 10^6 supernovae (each wide image will like contain 160 active supernovae)
• 6 x 106 orbits of solar system bodies (by number 95% of the objects we will know in our solar system)
• 10 time domain events with alerts with 60 seconds

The 10 year survey can be thought of as reaching:

• Hubble deep field depths (g~27.4) over ~20,000 sq deg (wide com)
• Hubble ultra-deep field depths (g~28.7) over ~50 sq deg (deep component)

Here are a selection of my favorite videos/photos taken during the construction/comissioning process: