Rubin’s First Frame

This is one of the first frames from the Rubin Observatory.

Published

May 19, 2026

Look at the image below.

This is one of the first frames from the Rubin Observatory — a patch of sky toward the Virgo Cluster. Each of those bright smudges is a galaxy. Tens of thousands of galaxies in a single image, from a single night, through a single telescope.

LSST will take images like this every night for ten years, covering almost the entire southern sky. In total, it will photograph tens of billions of objects. This isn’t a sky survey — it’s a time-lapse film of the evolution of the universe.

Somewhere in that film, Einstein rings are hiding.

A section of sky toward the Virgo Cluster photographed by Rubin Observatory.

A section of the Virgo Cluster captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.