Space images taken by the world's largest digital camera are so large that they require a “data butler” to process them.

(Image credit: OBSERVATORIO VERA C. RUBIN/HANDOUT/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The amount of data to be collected by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which unveiled its stunning first images this week, will far exceed any previous record set by other telescopes, prompting astronomers to move to cloud computing and collaborate with seven data brokers and data processors.

Once fully operational, the Rubin Observatory (supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy) will collect 20 terabytes of data each night. This data will be analyzed and send 10 million alerts to astronomers, which will be filtered by so-called “brokers” that turn this stream of information into more manageable data.

“In terms of data, we're at least an order of magnitude larger than previous telescopes,” George Beckett, a computer scientist at the University of Edinburgh and the UK database coordinator for the Rubin telescope, told Space.com.