The world will get a first look at images of the universe taken by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which has the planet’s largest digital camera, on Monday, June 23. Based on the hundreds of watch parties springing up around the globe, you won’t want to miss it.

The University of Delaware is hosting a public watch party in 101 Brown Laboratory, starting at 10 a.m. that day. All are invited. Register online at this website, and please include any questions you would like to ask of the speakers.

Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy, Rubin Observatory sits on a remote mountaintop in northern Chile. Equipped with a digital camera as big as a car, it is poised to see and record a decade of observations that will transform our understanding of the cosmos, according to Rubin Deputy Project Scientist and Interim Head of Science Federica Bianco, an associate professor of astronomy and physics at the University of Delaware.

“Every night, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will take enough data to fill 10 million books, recording a 10-year-long movie of the sky, which will give us access to unexplored regions of the universe,” Bianco said. “With these data and the power of artificial intelligence to study it, who knows what cosmic mysteries will be revealed! These first images are the start of a new era for our understanding of the universe.”

Bianco will participate from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., where she will serve on a media panel that will be livestreamed to the watch parties after the first images are revealed.

In UD’s Brown Lab auditorium (Room 101), doctoral students Siddharth (Sid) Chaini and Easton Honaker from Bianco’s research team will serve as the event hosts and introduce the program.

A panel of UD experts also will present, moderated by Tom Powers, director of the Center for Science, Ethics and Public Policy. Participants will include astrophysicist John Gizis from the Department of Physics and Astronomy and data scientist David Hong from the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering, as well as UD students who have contributed to the realization of the project including Shar Daniels, Riley Clarke, Willow Fox Fortino and Rodiat Ayinde, all from the Department of Physics and Astronomy.