Rubin will observe more variable stars than any previous observatory, enabling investigations into the mechanisms that drive their varying brightness and mapping the outer limits of our galaxy
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Marenfeld
NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, will soon collect an unprecedented amount of data on the changing southern night sky. By observing millions of stars that change in brightness, Rubin will allow for studies of the inner workings of variable stars and help define the edges of our galaxy.
The night sky might seem peaceful and still, but in fact millions of changes occur every night. Some of these changes are due to variable stars, which are stars that increase and decrease in brightness over time. These fluctuations can be the result of internal changes, such as the star swelling and shrinking, or external factors, such as the star being eclipsed by another star or a planet. Since the discovery of variable stars in the 1600s, scientists have used their rhythmic pulses to study stellar composition and evolution, as well as map vast cosmic distances.
Despite the long history of variable star studies, there is still a plethora of untapped knowledge to be uncovered, from understanding the exact mechanisms driving intrinsic brightness variability to identifying the most distant star in the Milky Way Galaxy. With its ability to precisely measure the light of faint objects and monitor how they change in time, Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to open up an entirely new realm of variable star investigations.
Rubin Observatory is a joint program of NSF NOIRLab and DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, who will cooperatively operate Rubin.
Over 10 years Rubin Observatory will conduct the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), during which it will use the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera — the largest camera ever built — to image a different region of the southern hemisphere sky about every 40 seconds. By the end of this deep and wide survey, Rubin will have imaged each region about 800 times. In doing so, Rubin will create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the changing night sky that includes detailed information about millions of variable stars.
Scientists preparing to use Rubin data are excited about how it will revolutionize the way we study the Universe. “The transformative aspect of what Rubin will be doing is not just the scale but also the precision,” says Adam Miller, a CIERA astronomer at Northwestern University and Director of the LSST-Discovery Alliance Data Science Fellowship Program. “This is going to allow for a lot of science that before now has been very difficult to accomplish, specifically for a field that I like to study: variable stars.”
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