I really like the Rubin because I think a lot of people focus too much on "deep" seeing (IE, looking at individual or several objects with very high magnification only once). The Rubin does much more "wide" seeing and this actually produces a ton of useful data- basically, enough data to collect reliable statistics about things. This helps refine cosmological models in ways that smaller individual observations cannot.
What's amazing to me is just how long it took to get to first photo- I was working on the design of the LSST scope well over 10 years ago, and the project had been underway for some time before that. It's hard to keep attention on projects for that long when a company can IPO and make billions in just a few years.
What's amazing to me is just how long it took to get to first photo- I was working on the design of the LSST scope well over 10 years ago, and the project had been underway for some time before that. It's hard to keep attention on projects for that long when a company can IPO and make billions in just a few years.