Rubin Tracks Skyscraper-Size Asteroids and Failed Supernovas

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has begun observations and is already making significant discoveries, including detecting 1,500 new asteroids in its first light images and identifying 19 "superfast rotators," including a 700-meter-wide asteroid that completes a revolution every 1.88 minutes—faster than expected for objects of that size. Over its decade-long mission, Rubin is expected to catalog 1 million previously undiscovered asteroids, thousands of comets, and billions of stars and galaxies, marking an unprecedented era of astronomical discovery through time-lapse imaging of the entire Southern Hemisphere night sky.