The Vera Rubin Observatory goes live tonight (in a sense).
Shakedown operations with the Vera Rubin ‘scope have been going on for months now, finding the last issues and optimizing the procedures for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Since some aspects aren’t humming right along yet, imaging cadence (and thus sky coverage) still isn’t up to plan. But we’ve reached a point where a crucial, expected, and necessary phase of output can now begin.
Starting this night (Chilean Standard Time, UTC-3), computer algorithms will scour the Vera Rubin images, and distribute alerts to the user community. Depending on what you signed up for, you will receive many alerts (possibly thousands a night) regarding new apparitions (possible optical counterparts to other phenomena), variable stars/supernovae, moving objects (i. e., small bodies), etc.
Consider this a warning before the torrent. Full-speed sky surveying (the official start of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time) is now no earlier than end of March, and likely April. There is a maintenance break that will take up much of mid-March (e. g., last fixes to mechanical issues found in shakeout), and before that final tuning of procedures and ops. That’s when you can expect thousands per night.
You’ve been warned: The field of small bodies, like other large-area searches, is about to be disrupted.