The largest digital camera ever built has released its first glamour shots of the universe
NEW YORK (AP) — The largest digital camera ever built released its first glamour shots of the universe Monday — including colorful nebulas, stars and galaxies.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a mountaintop in Chile, was built to take a deeper look at the night sky, covering hidden corners. Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy, it will survey the southern sky for the next 10 years.
The observatory's first look features the vibrant Trifid and Lagoon nebulas located thousands of light-years from Earth. A light-year is nearly 6 trillion miles. A gaggle of galaxies known as the Virgo Cluster were also captured, including two bright blue spirals.
The observatory hopes to image 20 billion galaxies and discover new asteroids and other celestial objects.
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.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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Gizmodo
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It's been more than two decades since the Vera C. Rubin Observatory was first conceived in a 'back-of-the-napkin' sketch. With construction on this huge telescope finally nearing completion, Rubin scientists unveiled its dazzling first images at a livestreamed event in Washington D.C. on Monday, June 23. Perched atop a mountain in the Chilean Andes, the Rubin Observatory boasts the largest digital camera ever built. The telescope, overseen by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DOE), recently used this car-sized, 3.2-gigapixel camera to conduct just over 10 hours of test observations. In this short period, Rubin observed millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars as well as 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids, according to an NSF release. Rubin scientists unveiled a 'sneak-peak' of some of these images just after midnight on Monday, but those were just the tip of the iceberg. 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