Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)

Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time is an upcoming wide-field, optical survey that will scan the entire visible southern sky every few days for a decade in six bands: u, g, r, i, z, and y. It began producing a public alert stream of astronomical transients detected by difference imaging on 25 February 2026. The expected alert rate based on pre-survey analysis is about 10^7 alerts per night.

Mission resources:

• Vera C. Rubin Observatory Homepage

• Rubin and LSST Key Numbers

• LSST Data Products Definition Document

Data products served by Pitt-Google:

• Alert Stream. The schema can be viewed at https://github.com/lsst/alert_packet/tree/main/python/lsst/alert/packet/schema. Complete documentation can be found at the mission resources above.