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  1. Education
  2. First Look Resources for Lasting Impact
  3. Unpacking First Look Images

Unpacking First Look Images

Look deeper into the Cosmic Treasure Chest image to estimate the total number of galaxies in the observable Universe!

How Many Galaxies Will Rubin See?
A smattering of hundreds of galaxies of different shapes and sizes against a black background, Semi-opaque teal blobs surround and connect many of the galaxies, tracing the distribution of the countless wandering stars that make up the intracluster light. The ghostly teal glow is primarily concentrated in an irregular shape around the galaxies in the center of the image, but some larger individual galaxies off to the sides have their own separate glows.

Actively engage your students in exploring the First Look moving object products to bring the dynamic solar system into your classroom!

Rubin’s Opening Act — Moving Objects First Look
An illustration of the asteroid belt as a dense donut-shaped ring of yellow points with the Sun at the center. The background is black with hints of dark blue in the corners and small white pinprick stars sprinkled throughout. A small illustrated Earth sits to the left of the Sun, and a semi-opaque, cone-like teal triangle extends from Earth toward the right. The cone opens up to a mosaic of a couple dozen small, square-like shapes representing Rubin Observatory’s LSST Camera’s detector area. The mosaic is overlaid onto a portion of the asteroid belt, and each tile represents a camera image that detects a group of asteroids. A thin curved white line begins behind the Sun and swings out around the Earth, tracing the path of a small, not-to-scale spacecraft heading toward the illuminated asteroids, ready for exploration.
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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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