• It’s April 2025, and the NSF-DOE Vera C. • Rubin Observatory control room at the Department of Energy’sSLAC National Accelerator Laboratoryis buzzing with activity. • On the Menlo Park campus in California, on the first floor of the home of theKavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology(KIPAC), you will find the lab’s Rubin Operations Center. • There a small group of scientists and engineers have gathered in front of a wall of oversized screens for a milestone moment: the witnessing of “First Photon,” the very first raw image captured by the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera,built at SLACand nowinstalled on Rubin Observatory’s telescope in Chile. • All eyes are fixed on a live stream of data flowing from Cerro Pachón, thousands of kilometers away in northern Chile. • Then, suddenly, it appears: an image of the night sky, freshly captured by the LSST Camera.
Article Summaries:
- In April 2025, the Rubin Operations Center at SLAC’s KIPAC campus in Menlo Park witnessed the first raw image from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, built at SLAC and installed on Rubin Observatory’s telescope in Chile. The live stream of data from Cerro Pachón filled a wall of monitors, marking the first on‑sky image received by the remote control room. The facility, equipped with the same software as the summit’s main control room, allows SLAC scientists and engineers to monitor, diagnose, and support the camera’s operations from thousands of miles away. This milestone precedes the start of full science operations later this fall.
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