The largest digital camera ever built has released its first glamour shots of the universe
The observatory hopes to image 20 billion galaxies and discover new asteroids and other celestial objects.
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The effort is named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who offered the first tantalizing evidence that a mysterious force called dark matter might be lurking in the universe. Researchers hope the observatory's discerning camera may yield clues about this elusive entity along with another called dark energy.
This image provided by the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory shows 678 separate images taken by the observatory in just over seven hours of observing time.
Uncredited/Associated Press
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