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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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  2. The effects of the Universe's large-scale structure on the light from distant galaxies

The effects of the Universe's large-scale structure on the light from distant galaxies

An illustration of the path that light from distant galaxies might take through the cosmic web. The background is a dark blue with criss-crossing light blue filaments made of tiny dots, resembling wisps of smoke or strings of a cobweb. Three bright teal squiggly lines spider out toward the right from three small illustrated galaxies slightly left of center, representing a squiggly path that light might take. The squiggly lines end at a pair of illustrated galaxies, one teal and one white. The teal version shows the true shape and position of the galaxy as it would have been seen without weak gravitational lensing effects. The white version represents the galaxy’s observed shape and position, slightly elongated and offset compared to the teal.
This illustration shows the bent paths of light from distant galaxies, caused by weak gravitational lensing from the Universe’s large-scale structure, or “cosmic web.” The galaxies’ true shapes become warped as the light travels and bends past the galaxies and galaxy clusters of the cosmic web. By the time the light is observed, the galaxies’ observed shapes and positions have changed (represented by the pairs of galaxies to the right). The effect is highly exaggerated in this illustration, and studies of weak lensing distortions used to measure how mass is distributed in the Universe typically require measurements of millions of galaxies. Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will observe billions of galaxies and enable more precise weak lensing measurements than have been possible before.
Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/J. Pinto
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Tags

  • #Illustration
  • #dark energy
  • #dark matter
  • #science release
  • #weak lensing