It's been about 8 months since the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) saw first light. Now the observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope is scanning the night sky to detect transient changes and sending alerts to astronomers and observatories around the world so they can perform follow-up observations. This alert system is one of the last milestones before the VRO starts its primary endeavour: the decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). On the night of February 24th, the VRO sent 800,000 astronomical alerts that direct astronomers' attention to new asteroids, supernovae, and other transient phenomenon. But the VRO is just getting started. The 800,000 alerts will be dwarfed by the seven million nightly alerts the telescope is expected to deliver once it's up to full speed. The VRO has the largest digital camera ever made, a 3.2 gigapixel camera that takes 30-second exposures. For ten years it will image the southern hemisphere sky each night and capture visible changes.…