Rubin Observatory's first LSST Camera release: 500k galaxies in the COSMOS field
69 points by MarcoDewey 8 hours ago | 10 comments
irickt 5 hours ago
Viewer from Aladin Sky Atlas
replybinarystargazer 3 hours ago
I’m the person in the chain that takes the scientific data and maps it into these color images used in the viewer (among other responsibilities). I spent a long time researching and developing the software that as close as possible maps the data into human perception. It means so much to see people out there appreciating our work, and following what Rubin will achieve. So that you for taking your time to check it out!
replyzh3 17 minutes ago
Jaw-dropping stuff, looking forward to pointing 9-year old daughter (in "Future Astrophysicist" t-shirt) at it!
replyPoxssibly a naive questions, after surfing the image for a while I didn't find any einstein rings (or arcs) - are they just rare/wrong scale or something else?
and thank you!
graerg 3 hours ago
Hey! Former astronomer here; I used to work a lot with SDSS data products. Do you happen to have a link to any sort of photometry DB/catalog for Rubin? Basically I’m looking to grab a ton of data but I’ve been out of the field for a while and I’m not sure where they publish their data sets and which ones you’d recommend as being relatively accessible.
replybinarystargazer 2 hours ago
You want to check out the early science release info at https://rubinobservatory.org/for-scientists/resources/early-... . This is all early science from preliminary data. It is mostly to help people ramp up developing their software against the type of things they will be seeing in the future. There some known issues and gotchas outlined in the release. Hopefully this will be enough to whet your appetite. The data seen in this sky viewer is part of the Data Preview 2.
replythegrim33 2 hours ago
I hope the data releases are a bit better than what I've seen from recent telescopes.
replyThe common pattern seems to be that the majority of data is locked away behind multi-year embargo periods, or never released to the public at all with no explanation why, with only the smallest little crumbs of raw data actually released to the public, and usually years out of date. Also you have to go through some kafkaesque chain of technologies/servers/bureaucracy to get access to that little bit of data.
It's a little depressing to me when the public funds these telescopes and then get snubbed when it comes to getting access to the data they produce.
Most telescopes take pictures of objects - this one takes pictures of the entire sky. And will do so in a time-lapse fashion for 10 years.
It's simultaneously more in line with a human's experience than an obscure wavelength of tiny object not visible to the naked eye - it takes a high-resolution picture that's similar to what you'd see if you look at the sky. But it's also profoundly grand beyond a human's experience because of just how much stuff is collected.