The 10-year LSST began the night of 29 June. The Early Operations system optimization phase is now complete and Rubin Observatory has transitioned to steady-state survey operations. RTN-122 provides a summary of the on-sky performance during the Early Operations period, and SOTN-004 describes current efforts and plans to improve the delivered image quality over the next year, including expected needs for continued on-sky engineering. An overview of pre-LSST observations through June 2026 is available on the survey progress webpage. PSTN-057 describes the survey strategy for the start of LSST.
Rubin Observatory will continue to share regular updates on the Observatory status, survey progress, and ongoing performance optimization efforts. The exact cadence, content, and format of these updates is to-be-determined and will likely evolve as Rubin Observatory settles into steady-state survey operations. Rubin Observatory welcomes input from the science community on what information is most helpful going forward.
The Observatory Live Status webpage includes links to several resources, including the scheduler viewer, alert stream status, and nightly summaries of observations and delivered data quality. Additional dashboards and data visualizations are currently under development.
On behalf of the entire Rubin Observatory, we thank the science community for following along with us on the exciting (and challenging) journey of on-sky commissioning and tuning up Rubin Observatory to be ready to begin the LSST. Preparing these commissioning and Early Operations updates for the science community has been a good opportunity to step back from the rush of day-to-day technical activities and remind ourselves of the bigger picture of what we all hope to accomplish together with LSST data.