Why you should join a watch party to see the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

I have never been to a watch party, unless you count me and two of my friends getting together to watch Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (complete with themed snacks). But now, it seems, I will have my chance – as watch parties are no longer just for new movies. In a few days, I am planning to go along to a watch party for a new telescope.

I was lucky enough to be part of one of the first public groups to visit the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, as part of a New Scientist tour. Now, just over two years later, I can’t wait to see the first images the enormous telescope has captured, which will be released on 23 June.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is an engineering marvel. It is designed to take scans of the entire southern hemisphere sky in just three nights – a huge step up from any previous all-sky surveys. Rubin will scan the sky every night for 10 years, as part of the telescope’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). During that period, the project is expected to revolutionise astronomy, answering long-standing questions about things like dark matter and finding new mysteries altogether.

Naturally, the images and videos the telescope will capture are going to be mind-blowing. To truly appreciate their beauty, a phone screen won’t cut it. Nor will a desktop. To get the full definition of each individual image would take 400 ultra-HD TVs, according to the LSST UK consortium. So, the team has been encouraging its partner institutions around the world to host watch parties, in order to appreciate the images in full definition.

What exactly is going on at each party will vary depending on the institution, many of which will be planetariums, museums or universities. You could watch at the Perth Observatory in Western Australia, for example, or at the City University of Hong Kong. There will be parties all over the US, including at Detroit Observatory in Michigan, where attendees will see science demonstrations and hear from local experts. But the one thing these events will all have in common is that at 11am EDT, which is 4pm GMT, the first images and videos taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will be published and everyone will watch as they are livestreamed.

It is likely that, with so much detail captured in each image, it will take some time to appreciate them in full detail – zooming out to witness the full field of view of this impressive telescope, but also zooming in to look at galaxies as we have never seen them before. Rubin’s images will be more detailed than even those of the James Webb Space Telescope: its field of view covers the equivalent area of the sky as 45 full moons, while JWST maps about 3 full moons’ worth. There will also be timelapse videos, taken as Rubin watches the sky to see how it changes over time.

Of course, you will see the images online, in copies of New Scientist magazine and all over social media as soon as they are out. But if you want to mark the occasion with something a little more communal, check out this interactive map to find a watch party near you – or if you can’t make it to one, why not host your own? You won’t be able to see the full definition on your home screen, but at least you can capture some of the excitement of seeing the images and videos around others.

I will be going along to a local event in the hope I can recreate some of the feeling of awe I had when I stood inside the observatory and saw its scale – a scale that, of course, is nothing compared to that of the wider universe, which Rubin will help us understand just that little bit more.