Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2026

MAY-JUNE 2026 This analysis is also important be- cause it paves the way for the new NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, funded by the NSF and DOE/SC, and jointly operated by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC, to collect complementary data during its decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). LSST is a deep and wide survey that will catalog about 20 billion galaxies across the entire Southern Hemi- sphere sky. The data can be combined with those from surveys like DES to en- able high-accuracy measurements of cosmological parameters that will further refine our understanding of dark energy and the expansion his- tory of the Universe. “DES has been transformative, and the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory will take us even further,” said Chris Davis, NSF Program Director for NOIRLab. “Rubin’s unprecedented survey of the southern sky will enable new tests of gravity and shed light on dark energy.” !