SCIPP and UC Santa Cruz researchers played pivotal roles in the unveiling of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s first images, released June 23, 2025. Located atop Chile’s Cerro Pachón, this NSF–DOE facility includes the 8.4 m Simonyi Survey Telescope outfitted with a record-breaking 3.2‑gigapixel camera—the largest ever built. Steven Ritz led the Images Group that produced all the image products for First Look. Since 2013, UCSC faculty and students—including Ritz, Tesla Jeltema, Brant Robertson, Connie Rockosi, and others—have contributed across camera software, governance, and dark-energy research. Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) will capture the southern sky every few nights over a decade, generating a time-lapse of the dynamic universe—tracking everything from distant galaxies to near‑Earth asteroids.

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