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Largest camera on earth gives new views of the cosmos. How Duke helped.
A two-hour bus ride took Chris Walter from the coastal town of La Serena to the tops of the Andes mountains during the two years he worked on an observatory in Chile.
The observatory sits beside other telescopes atop the Cerro Pachón mountain, which the Duke University physics professor remembers being 'very dry' and 'typically not that hot.'
It was in stark contrast to Durham, where physicists, astronomers and journalists gathered in 96 degree heat at Duke's Wallace Wade Stadium on Monday, huddling beneath a pergola in a sliver of shade..
Dripping in sweat, the group watched the stadium screen, patiently waiting for the first, highly anticipated images from the telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
Duke's First Look watch party was one of hundreds worldwide.
The Rubin Observatory is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy. It's named for astronomer Vera Rubin, an advocate for women in science, and has been a work in progress for the past two decades.
The observatory will provide unprecedented amounts of data about the universe, only 5% of which is understood. It will detect dark matter and exploding stars, and it has already detected thousands of previously unidentified asteroids, which are rocky objects that orbit in space.
Rubin's telescope has a 3,200 megapixel digital camera, the largest ever built, described as 'the size of a small car but twice as heavy' by Harriet Kung, acting director of the Office of Science.
Researchers in Duke's cosmology group contributed to the software and hardware of the telescope. Walter started the group in 2018.
The group's active optics team helps ensure the telescope is as focused as possible, explained Bekah Polen, team member and Ph.D. student in Duke's physics department.
'When you're looking at something far away, there's dark matter along your line of sight that distorts the image you're seeing,' Polen said. 'Manipulating the components of the telescope to get a sharper image goes a long way'.
Despite its size, the telescope can move around in seconds as opposed to minutes. Every night, it will take 20 terabytes worth of ultra-high resolution, ultra-wide images of the night sky in the southern hemisphere.
One image can contain nearly 10 million galaxies, allowing the telescope to survey the universe every three days.
The observatory will collect photos for 10 years, creating a digital record of the cosmos over space and time. This compilation of pictures, known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, will be the most detailed time-lapse of the universe. The survey's dataset will include roughly 40 billion stars, galaxies, and solar system objects that will have been observed over 800 times.
The data will help scientists answer questions about the universe, such as how the Milky Way — which contains our solar system — formed and what the 95% of the universe that is unknown is made of.
Duke cosmologists hope to gain a better understanding of dark energy, which accounts for 68% of the universe and which NASA describes as an unknown force accelerating the expansion of the universe.
'Dark energy seems to be less of a thing and more of a property of space,' Walter said. 'It's very mysterious.'
The NSF is a major funder of foundational science, research that increases understanding of natural phenomena. President Trump's proposed budget cuts slashes NSF funding by 57%, compared to 2024 .
The Rubin observatory's funding is set to increase from $17 to $32 million. But an increase was expected as the observatory moves into its operational phase, and that total is 20% less than what was expected.
The proposed NSF cuts are a part of Trump's larger mission to decrease science spending across the board. It is unclear whether these cuts will be enacted as the proposal must be approved by the Congress.
