Thanks to Fink, a software founded by two CNRS
engineers, it is now possible to track millions of transient celestial phenomena observed in the sky by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, in real time and with unprecedented precision. Minutes after each image is taken, Fink receives, processes, enriches, and cross-references the data with existing datasets. This allows even the faintest variations in detected light to be characterised with remarkable accuracy. The data is then stored, classified and shared with users –scientists and astronomy enthusiasts – in a concise and targeted manner. This continuous, open-access, real-time sharing of information greatly enhances worldwide telescope coordination, boosting the potential for new scientific discoveries. Fink was developed in response to a 2019 call for projects issued by the Rubin Observatory. It relies on cutting-edge techniques in large-scale data processing and AI-based machine learning
. Today, more than a hundred international experts contribute to enriching its source code and databases.
Fink is one of seven specialised data-processing tools
selected by the Observatory. As part of its 10-year systematic survey of the southern sky, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), to be launched in 2026, Rubin now collects 20 terabytes – or 20,000,000,000,000 bytes – of images every night. Up to 10 million transient phenomena are detected nightly by Rubin and processed by the software, a feat made possible by the contributions of each member of the collaboration. From supernovae and asteroid flybys to star collisions with black holes, Fink is expected to enable major discoveries in transient astrophysics. This builds on its five years of operation with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) telescope. Using data from Rubin, Fink can also enable the detection of rare interstellar objects passing through the Solar System, as well as potentially hazardous asteroids for Earth. Scientists also hope it will reveal entirely new astrophysical phenomena. In the future, the data collected will also be used in cosmology to study two mysterious components that make up more than 95% of the cosmos: dark matter and dark energy, the latter driving the Universe’s accelerated expansion.
The CNRS once again plays a major role in this international research project, led for nearly 30 years by the US Department of Energy and National Science Foundation. Several laboratories within the French organisation have worked with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on the construction of the LSST camera, the largest digital camera ever built
. Installed at the Observatory in May 2024, the camera is designed to produce a high-definition, four-dimensional record of the evolution of the Universe, with unprecedented depth and detail, revealing even the faintest and most distant objects. With its 3.2-billion-pixel sensor, the camera will scan the entire southern sky every three nights over the next decade. Each of the 800 images per cycle will cover an area equivalent to 45 full moons. Overall, the Rubin Observatory is expected to record more celestial objects in its first year of operation than all other optical observatories combined throughout human history.
Images stamps which are part of the alert packages received by Fink: new observation (left), image reference (center) and difference image (right). The difference image shows an increase in brightness within the arms of the spiral galaxy, due to a supernova explosion. You can check this object in Fink here. © Collaboration Fink/LSST
More information: Fink broker