Seminario DAS: First transient alerts from Rubin Observatory

Speaker: Dr. Anais Moller.
Affiliation: Swinburne University of Technology.

Abstract: The Vera C. Rubin Observatory began releasing public alerts in February 2026. Each night, Rubin can detect millions of changes in the sky, from exploding and variable stars to AGN and entirely new phenomena. Fully exploiting this stream requires methods that can handle its data volume, maximise science return and prioritise limited follow-up resources.

I will introduce Fink, a community alert broker with real-time access to Rubin data. Fink combines big-data technologies with machine learning to classify and prioritise diverse transients, including supernovae, kilonovae and solar system objects, enabling a wide range of science cases and optimised follow-up strategies. I will present early results from Rubin's first alerts and show how Rubin can be used to study supernova populations and exploit them as cosmological probes, testing whether dark energy is a cosmological constant or evolves with time.