On Wednesday, June 25, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History hosted a special “First Look” event in partnership with Las Cumbres Observatory (LCO), debuting the first images from the groundbreaking Vera C. Rubin Observatory. As the Museum prepares to launch its Space Sciences exhibit on July 12, this event offers an early glimpse into the global discoveries and local science shaping our understanding of the universe.
Located in Chile, the Rubin Observatory is the most powerful survey telescope ever built. Over the next decade, it will scan the southern sky every few nights as part of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)—capturing dynamic events like supernovae, near-Earth asteroids, and black hole mergers, and helping to unravel mysteries like dark matter.
“The Rubin Observatory will observe countless objects in our local universe that have never been seen before. LCO scientists have been preparing for this for over a decade and we can’t wait to see what exciting things Rubin reveals,” says LCO Observatory Director Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, Ph.D…