Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2025

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 ington, D.C. The imagery shows cos- mic phenomena captured at an un- precedented scale. In just over 10 hours of test observations, Rubin has already captured millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars and thousands of asteroids. The imagery is a small preview of Rubin Observatory’s upcoming 10- year scientific mission to explore and understand some of the Uni- verse’s biggest mysteries. “The Rubin Observatory demon- strates that the United States re- by NOIRLab Josie Fenske Vera C. Rubin Observatory unveils its first imagery T he NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Ob- servatory, a major new scien- tific facility jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Founda- tion and the U.S. Department of En- ergy’s Office of Science, released its first imagery at an event in Wash-