The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory in Chile, its main task will be carrying out a synoptic astronomical survey, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

The word “synoptic” is derived from the Greek words σύν (syn ’together’) and ὄψις (opsis ‘view’), and describes observations that give a broad view of a subject at a particular time. The observatory is located on the El Peñón peak of Cerro Pachón, a 2,682-meter-high mountain in Coquimbo Region, in northern Chile, alongside the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes. The LSST Base Facility is located about 100 kilometres away from the observatory by road, in the city of La Serena. The observatory is named for Vera Rubin, an American astronomer who pioneered discoveries about galactic rotation rates. The Rubin Observatory will house the Simonyi Survey Telescope, a wide-field reflecting telescope with an 8.4-meter primary mirror that will photograph the entire available sky every few nights. The telescope uses a novel three-mirror design, a variant of three-mirror anastigmat, which allows a compact telescope to deliver sharp images over a very wide 3.5-degree-diameter field of view. Images will be recorded by a 3.2-gigapixel charge-coupled device imaging (CCD) camera, the largest digital camera ever constructed.

The LSST was proposed in 2001, and construction of the mirror began (with private funds) in 2007. LSST then became the top-ranked large ground-based project in the 2010 Astrophysics Decadal Survey, and the project officially began construction on 1 August 2014, when the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) authorized the FY2014 portion ($27.5 million) of its construction budget. Funding comes from the NSF, the United States Department of Energy, and private funding raised by the dedicated international non-profit organization, the LSST Discovery Alliance. Operations are under the management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). The total construction cost is expected to be about $680 million. Site construction began on 14 April 2015 with the ceremonial laying of the first stone. The first on-sky observations with the engineering camera occurred on 24 October 2024, while system first light images were released 23 June 2025. Full survey operations are planned to begin later in 2025, due to COVID-related schedule delays. Rubin Observatory data is scheduled to become fully public after two years.

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