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      • Rubin in Chile
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      • Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)
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      • Alert Stream
      • Rubin Numbers
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      • Activities, Games, and More
      • Space Surveyors Game
      • Make Your Own Rubin Voices Trading Card
      • Animated Video Series
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The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science will support Rubin Observatory in its operations phase to carry out the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. They will also provide support for scientific research with the data. During operations, NSF funding is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA) under a cooperative agreement with NSF, and DOE funding is managed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC), under contract by DOE. Rubin Observatory is operated by NSF NOIRLab and SLAC.

NSF is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950 to promote the progress of science. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.

The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

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  1. Education
  2. Educators
  3. Investigations
  4. Exploring the Observable Universe
  5. Videos and Auxiliary Content

Exploring the Observable Universe

Start Investigation
Investigation total duration
2 hours
Early
Access

Videos and Auxiliary Content

Videos and Slides

Here is a recently released (2021) interactive visualization of about 30,000 galaxies based on data collected by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in the span of 5 hours.

These resources are from a teacher workshop on this investigation. They include a talk (15 minute video) from an expert in this astronomical topic and the accompanying talk visuals (speaker slides).

Video: Eric Morganson, "How Astronomy's Biggest Dataset Will Change Your Universe"

Speaker slides

Options for Extended Exploration

  1. Some voids are smaller than others. Is there a relationship between the size of the void and the amount of its surrounding galaxies clustered into walls, bubbles, sheets?
  2. Are all voids growing over time? If not, can you discover a pattern about the ones that grow vs. the ones that seem to stay the same size or shrink? What might account for what you observe?
  3. Recent studies suggest that our galaxy may be located in a void. How would you go about verifying this with Rubin Observatory data?

Make Your Own Rubin Voices Trading Card

Use this activity:

  • To encourage students to imagine themselves in a STEAM career.
  • To Introduce the diversity of people and occupations involved in Observatory operations.
  • As a "get to know you" activity


Make Your Own Rubin Voices Trading Card

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