The light that waited
Every star in this movie has been waiting for it. On June 30, a 3,200-megapixel camera on a Chilean mountain began filming the southern sky, one frame every forty seconds, for ten years. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory calls it the greatest cosmic movie ever made. The light it catches left some galaxies billions of years ago and arrives now, on schedule. The largest camera ever built, it will revisit every patch of sky about 800 times over the decade: ten terabytes a night, seven million alerts when something moves, flares, or dies. Before opening night it found eleven thousand new asteroids in six weeks. That was the rehearsal. The observatory is named for Vera Rubin, who proved galaxies spin like they hold more than we can see, and who was once refused Palomar's great telescope for lack of a women's bathroom. She waited a long time to be let in. This camera waits the way she did: patiently, and it keeps everything it sees. Ten years from now there will be a film of everything that changed in the southern sky. Buried in it, the light that waited for us to invent a way to watch. NSF's acting director, Brian Stone: “Today, we begin filming the greatest cosmic movie ever made.”