Next-gen Tools For Next-gen Telescopes

Pennsylvania State University Technological advances in the latest generation of telescopes are allowing astronomers to peer deeper into the universe, analyze the light from distant objects more precisely, and gain new insights into the origin and evolution of the universe. But new technology is almost always accompanied by new challenges.

These next-generation telescopes and the greatly enhanced quality of their observations are poised to detect cosmic phenomena at an unprecedented rate, creating equally unprecedented amounts of data, requiring new methods to make sense of it all. One such telescope is located at the Vera C.

Rubin Observatory in Chile, which started observing in June 2025 . Using a 3,200-megapixel camera the size of a car, Rubin scans the entire visible southern sky every three to four nights, producing about 20 terabytes of data each night as part of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

Another next-generation telescope, NASA's Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope , launched in August and will produce about 1.36 terabytes of data each day, adding up to more than 20,000 terabytes in its first five years. By comparison, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope produced 172 terabytes of data in its entire 10-year run, and NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is expected to produce about 1,000 terabytes at the end of its first five years.

"In order to make sense of this extraordinary amount of data and identify rare phenomena, we need to develop new algorithms in a scalable and efficient way," said Charlotte Ward, Mercedes Richards Career Development Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics. "My group helps develop flexible software and methods that enable scientific discovery across astronomy and astrophysics.

We are driven by our own scientific goals, which include understanding how black holes form and grow over time, measuring the expansion of the universe with supernovae, and studying host galaxy environments of transient, or short-lived, phenomena. But we're always thinking about how to make sure our data releases and software are relevant to the entire scientific community." Rubin's wide field of view and extreme sensitivity to faint light will allow for the detection of real-time changes in the sky as well as rare events, including everything from supernovae, gamma-ray burst afterglows, and emissions from supermassive black holes.

Roman will map the visible universe in optical and infrared wavelengths with high resolution, helping identify and study distant supernovae and supermassive black holes and their host galaxies, which may improve understanding of how black holes and stars evolve and lend insight into the origins of the universe.

Both telescopes should also help answer questions about dark energy - a mysterious cosmic force that astrophysicists say makes up two-thirds of the known universe and is believed to be causing the universe to expand. "We are actually very interested in using the two new telescopes and their data together," Ward said.

"Rubin has an ultra-wide field of view but is limited to optical wavelengths and has to deal with distortions and interference by the Earth's atmosphere. Roman doesn't have as wide of a field of view, but it has very high resolution because it's in space without Earth's atmosphere getting in the way.

If we take the images from Rubin on the ground and from Roman in space and we model them together, we can overcome the individual challenges of each instrument. If we can combine the strengths of these telescopes and their surveys with new computational tools and machine learning techniques, we'll have a much more enhanced scientific analysis." /Public Release.

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