Get Involved in Rubin Research
What good is a giant data set if we don't have as many eyes on it as possible, ready to make discoveries? That’s where you come in — the more people looking for particular objects or patterns in the data, the more questions we can answer. Explore real science projects and contribute to astronomy and astrophysics today!
Our partnership with Zooniverse
We knew that public participation in science would be a huge part of Rubin Observatory's success, so we partnered with Zooniverse, the largest and most popular platform where everyone can get involved. With our input, the team at Zooniverse has made it easy for researchers to build projects that use Rubin data. That means there are lots of Rubin science projects for you to get involved with, and your help will contribute to cutting-edge astronomy and astrophysics discoveries!
Zooniverse is more than a work space—it’s a community. Ask questions or have conversations about the work you’re doing together and participate at any level that’s comfortable for you. Each project gives you the information and guidance you need to make a meaningful contribution, no prior training required. Give it a try, and have fun!
Projects you can explore in anticipation of Rubin
Superluminous Supernovae
The Superluminous Supernovae project explores the brightest supernovae in the Universe and asks for your help to find more of these mysterious events. This project uses the Lasair alert broker, which will produce alerts of variable, transient and moving objects from Rubin in the future.
Backyard Worlds
The Backyard Worlds project hunts for elusive moving celestial objects in or near our Solar System. With Rubin, there will be a flood of new data to search through!
Space Warps
The Space Warps project looks for the signatures of strong lensing — the distortion of distant background galaxies around massive foreground objects. These lenses are hard to find but help us understand dark matter, one of Rubin's key objectives.
The Daily Minor Planet
The Catalina Sky Survey monitors the sky nearly every clear night, and you can help them identify potentially hazardous asteroids and other near earth objects (NEOs). With Rubin's repeating survey of the southern sky, there will be many new objects to find.
Galaxy Zoo
The Zooniverse itself has is origins in the Galaxy Zoo project which classifies galaxy types and shapes. Rubin's data set will contain a staggering 20 billion galaxies — so it will be all hands on deck to classify this tremendous data set!
Active Asteroids
The Active Asteroids project hunts for mysterious asteroids which show evidence of ices and sometimes comet-like tails. Rubin's dataset will be a perfect place to find and explore the unusual objects in our solar system.
Science goals
Discover the key science areas where Rubin Observatory will advance astronomy and astrophysics.
