Latest news with #SimonyiSurveyTelescope
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Vera C Rubin Observatory reveals 1st stunning images of the cosmos. Scientists are 'beyond excited about what's coming'
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its first images as it begins its 10-year mission conducting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST will revolutionize astronomy with one of its primary aims being the investigation of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter, the strange substance that accounts for 85% of the "stuff" in the cosmos but remains effectively its perch atop Cerro Pachón in Chile, a mountain that rises around 5,200 feet (1,600 meters) above sea level, Rubin scans the entire night sky over the Southern Hemisphere once every three nights. This endeavor will be the most extensive continuous mapping of the southern sky ever attempted, and will be conducted by Rubin using the 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope and the LSST camera (LSSTCam), the largest digital camera ever constructed at around the size of a small car. Just one image from the LSSTCam covers an area equivalent to the size of 45 full moons in the sky. Above is the observatory's first image of the Virgo cluster, a vast cluster of galaxies located around 53.8 million light-years from Earth. The image shows a vast array of celestial objects, including galaxies and stars. Demonstrating the true potential of Rubin, this image alone contains a rich tapestry of about 10 million galaxies. Staggeringly, the ten million galaxies in the above image are just 0.05% of the number of around 20 billion galaxies that Rubin will have imaged by the end of the LSST. In fact, in a decade, Rubin will have collected data on an estimated 40 billion celestial bodies, meaning we will have seen more heavenly bodies than there are humans alive for the first time. Unsurprisingly, many of these objects are completely new and viewed by humanity for the first time today. The objects that are familiar have been highlighted in the image below. "The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will allow us to add depth and dynamism to the observation of the universe," Roberto Ragazzoni, president of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), said in a statement. "With this 8-meter class telescope capable of continuously mapping the southern sky every three days, we enter the era of 'astro-cinematography', exploring a new dimension: that of time, with which we expect to study the cosmos with a new perspective, which is now possible thanks also to the use of new information technologies to process a mass of data that would otherwise be inscrutable." One of the most impressive abilities of Rubin will be its capability to study objects that change in brightness over time as it builds the "greatest movie of all time." This unique power comes from the fact that Rubin can scan the sky at superfast speeds, around 10 to 100 times faster than similar large telescopes. The "transients" it sees will include over 100 million variable stars changing their brightness because of pulsations, thermal instabilities, and even because of planets "transiting," or passing between Rubin and their visible disks. Rubin will also be able to observe millions of massive stars as they end their lives and undergo supernova explosions. The groundbreaking observatory will also investigate so-called "type Ia supernovas," triggered when dead star-white dwarfs undergo runaway nuclear explosions after overfeeding on stellar companions. Type Ia supernovas are also known as "standard candles" due to the fact that their consistent luminosities allow astronomers to use them to measure cosmic distances. Thus, Rubin will also make an indirect impact on astronomy by providing scientists with a wealth of new and better-understood distances between objects in the universe. Closer to home, by observing objects as they change in brightness in the night-sky, Rubin will provide astronomers with a better picture of asteroids and small bodies as they orbit Earth. This could help space agencies like NASA assess potential threats to Earth and defend against asteroids. The YouTube video below shows over 2,100 new asteroids discovered by Rubin in its first week of operations alone. "If something in the sky moves or changes, Rubin will detect it and distribute the information in real time to the entire world. This means that we will be able to observe transient phenomena in action, making new, often unexpected, astrophysical discoveries possible," said Sara (Rosaria) Bonito of the Board of Directors of the LSST Discovery Alliance of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. "Rubin will produce a true multi-colored movie of the sky, lasting an entire decade. A movie that will allow us to see the universe as never before: not just through static images, but in dynamic evolution." Hours before the release of the main images above at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Monday (June 23), the Rubin team released several smaller "preview" images that are smaller sections of these larger images. These give the general public an opportunity to witness the incredible detail in images captured by the LSST camera. "These sneak preview images already highlight the uniqueness of Rubin to look at the cosmos in a way that we have never done before, bringing the sky to life!" Andrés Alejandro Plazas Malagón, a researcher at Stanford University and part of the Rubin Observatory's Community Science Team, told "These preview images also already highlight the sophistication and power of the software used to reduce or 'clean' the images: the LSST Science Pipelines."The image below shows the Triffid nebula (also known as Messier 20 or NGC 6514) in the top right, which is located around 9,000 light-years from Earth, and the Lagoon nebula (Messier 8 or NGC 6523), estimated to be 4,000 to 6,000 light-years away. These are regions in which clouds of gas and dust are condensing to birth new stars. The above picture combines 678 separate images taken by Rubin over just over 7 hours of observing time. By combining images like this, Rubin is capable of revealing details otherwise too faint to see or practically invisible. This reveals the clouds of gas and dust that comprise these nebulae in incredible detail. "The Trifod-Lagoon image shows these two nebulae or 'stellar nurseries' highlighting regions of gas and dust, made from about 678 individual images," Plazas Malagón said. "It's impressive how the large field of view of LSSTCam captured the scene all at once!"The image below shows a small section of Rubin's total view of the Virgo cluster. The bright foreground stars in this image are located closer to home, lying in the Milky Way. In the background are many galaxies even more distant than the Virgo cluster. The image below shows another small slice of Rubin's total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible in the lower right of the image are two prominent spiral galaxies. In the upper right of the image are three galaxies that are colliding and merging. The image also contains several other groups of distant galaxies, as well as a wealth of stars in our galaxy. It is just one 50th of the entire image it came from. "The other preview images show a fraction of the Virgo cluster, a galaxy cluster of about 1,000 galaxies. Built from about 10 hours of data, we already see the capability of Rubin to capture the faintest objects with exquisite detail, which will enable amazing science. And these images are just about 2 percent of the field of view of a single LSSTcam image!" Plazas Malagón said. Related Stories: — How the Rubin observatory could detect thousands of 'failed stars' — World's largest digital camera to help new Vera Rubin Observatory make a 'time-lapse record of the universe' (video) — Rubin Observatory aces 1st image tests, gets ready to use world's largest digital camera Following the release of these images, the next big step for Rubin with be the beginning of the LSST, which should occur over the next few months."The Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its first LSST project are a unique opportunity for the new generation," Bonito said. "It is a great legacy for anyone who wants to approach scientific disciplines, offering a revolutionary tool for astrophysics and new technologies for data interpretation."Bonito added that the astrophysics that can be done with Rubin is extremely diversified: a single observation campaign will allow us to respond to very broad scientific themes, which concern our galaxy but also dark matter, our solar system, and even the most unpredictable phenomena that occur in the sky." And with 10 years of the LSST ahead of it, the future of Rubin and astronomy in general is bright."These preview images also already highlight the sophistication and power of the LSST Science Pipelines software used to reduce or 'clean' the images," Plazas Malagón concluded. "As an observational cosmologist and having worked in the development of the LSST Science Pipelines and the characterization of the LSSTCam, I'm proud and beyond excited about what's coming!" To dive into the first image from Rubin and explore for yourself, visit the Vera C. Rubin Observatory SkyViewer page.
New York Post
17 hours ago
- Science
- New York Post
Largest camera ever built captures eye-popping images of millions of distant stars and galaxies
The first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory showed off a breathtaking preview of its capabilities — capturing millions of stars and galaxies light-years from Earth, along with thousands of never-before-seen asteroids. The observatory — perched atop Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes Mountains — will train its high-powered 27.5-foot Simonyi Survey Telescope at the night sky over the next decade to give astronomers an unprecedented look at the cosmos. 3 The approximately $810 million Vera C. Rubin observatory took nearly two decades to complete. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/T. Matsopoulos Advertisement The newly released images were compiled from around 10 hours of test observations, showing swirling clouds of pink and golden dust that make up the Trifid nebula and a large cluster of galaxies known as the Virgo cluster — both located thousands of light-years away. In all, the video made from the first 1,100 test images shows around 10 million distant galaxies in the camera's wide-view lens, a tiny fraction of the approximately 20 billion galaxies the Rubin observatory is hoping to capture over the course of its work. 'NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined,' National Science Foundation Chief of Staff Brian Stone told CNN. Advertisement The test images also uncovered 2,104 asteroids that had never before been seen in our solar system, including seven 'near-Earth' asteroids — those within about 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. Scientists at the observatory said none of them pose any threat to our planet. Images of the asteroids are expected to be shared with the public on Monday. Typical telescopes based in space or on the ground are capable of spying around 20,000 asteroids each year, while the Rubin Observatory is expected to discover millions of the rocky space objects in just the next two years alone, according to the US National Science Foundation, which funded the observatory along with the US Department of Energy. Advertisement 3 First images included the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas, both thousands of light-years from Earth. AP The primary objective of the $810 million observatory, which took approximately 20 years to build, is to create an ultra-high-definition movie of the images it captures over the next 10 years known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. The resulting time-lapse compilation will show details like comets and asteroids zooming by, exploding stars and distant galaxies transforming over time. 3 Another image captured showed a large cluster of galaxies called the Virgo cluster, representing just a fraction of the 20 billion galaxies the observatory is expected to image over the next 10 years. AP Advertisement '[Rubin] will enable us to explore galaxies, stars in the Milky Way, objects in the solar system, and all in a truly new way. Since we take images of the night sky so quickly and so often, (it) will detect millions of changing objects literally every night,' Aaron Roodman, a professor of particle physics and astrophysics at Stanford University, told the outlet. The observatory's unique capabilities will help other powerful telescopes direct their focus, acting as a 'discovery machine' to discover other interesting areas of the universe that warrant a closer look. The telescope's namesake, Vera C. Rubin, is considered one of the most influential female astronomers of all time. She is credited with providing some of the first evidence proving the existence of dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up much of our universe.
National Geographic
a day ago
- Science
- National Geographic
These are the first images from Earth's giant new telescope
This image shows another small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory's total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. Image by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Perched high in the foothills of Chile's Andes mountains, a revolutionary new space telescope has just taken its first pictures of the cosmos—and they're spectacular. Astronomers are excited about the first test images released from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory , which show the universe in unprecedented detail, from violent cosmic collisions to faraway nebulas. 'It's really a great instrument. Its depth and large field of view will allow us to take really nice images of stars, especially faint ones,' says Christian Aganze, a galactic archeologist at Stanford University who will use the observatory's data to study the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. 'We are truly entering a new era.' The observatory has a few key components: A giant telescope, called the Simonyi Survey Telescope, is connected to the world's largest and highest resolution digital camera. Rubin's 27-foot primary mirror, paired with a mind-boggling 3,200-megapixel camera, will repeatedly take 30-second exposure images of vast swaths of the sky with unrivaled speed and detail. Each image will cover an area of sky as big as 40 full moons . (Vera Rubin was the GOAT of dark matter) Simonyi Survey Telescope at night, Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic Every three nights for the next 10 years, Rubin will produce a new, ultra-high-definition map of the entire visible southern sky. With this much coverage, scientists hope to create an updated and detailed 'movie' they can use to view how the cosmos changes over time. 'Since we take images of the night sky so quickly and so often, we'll detect millions of changing objects literally every night. We also will combine those images to be able to see incredibly dim galaxies and stars, including galaxies that are billions of light years away,' said Aaron Roodman, program lead for the LSST Camera at Rubin Observatory and Deputy Director for the observatory's construction, at a press conference in early June. 'It has been incredibly exciting to see the Rubin observatory begin to take images. It will enable us to explore galaxies, stars in the Milky Way, objects in the solar system—all in a truly new way.' This image shows another small section of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. Image by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory The first set of images taken with Rubin's specially-designed digital camera unveils the universe in startling detail. Researchers combined seven hours of observations into a single image which captures the ancient light cast out by the Lagoon Nebula and the Trifid Nebula. These vast clouds of interstellar gas and dust are 4,350 light-years away and 4,000 light-years away from Earth, respectively. Two other photos show the telescope's view of the Virgo Cluster, a mix of nearly 2,000 elliptical and spiral galaxies. Bright stars from our own cosmic neighborhood shine amongst sprawling systems of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity. Each of the scattered pin-prick dots in the background represents a distant galaxy. Observation Specialist Lukas Eisert at the Control Room of Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic William O'Mullane, deputy project manager specializing in software, looking at images shot at Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 31, 2025. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic Rubin's images of the Virgo Cluster also show the chaotic jumble of merging galaxies—a process that plays a crucial role in galaxy evolution. (The four biggest mysteries the Vera Rubin Observatory could solve) 'The Virgo cluster images are breathtaking,' Aganze says.'The level of detail, from the large-scale merging galaxies to details in the spiral structure of individual galaxies, more distant galaxies in the background, foreground Milky Way stars, all in one image, is transformative!' The first images shown to the public, Roodman added, 'provide just a taste of Rubin's discovery power.' For the next decade, Rubin will capture millions of astronomical objects each day—or more than 100 every second. Ultimately, it's expected to discover about 17 billion stars and 20 billion galaxies that we've never seen before. In this immense image, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory offers a brand new view of two old friends: the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae. The image provides a demonstration of what makes Rubin unique: its combination of an extremely wide field of view and the speed that allows it to take lots of big images in a very short time. Combining images reveals subtle details in the clouds of gas and dust. The more images we can combine, the more detail we see! This almost 5-gigapixel image combines 678 exposures taken in just 7.2 hours of observing time, and was composed from about two trillion pixels of data in total. No other observatory is capable of producing an image of such a wide area so quickly and with this much depth. The Trifid Nebula (also referred to as Messier 20) is a standout in the sky. It's a bright, colorful cloud of gas and dust about 5,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. What makes it especially striking is the combination of features packed into one place: a glowing pink emission nebula, a cool blue reflection nebula, and dark dust lanes that split it into three sections—hence the name 'Trifid.' Inside, new stars are forming and blasting out strong winds and radiation, carving up the gas around them. It gives us a dramatic glimpse at how massive stars shape their surroundings even as they're being born. Below the Trifid Nebula in this image is the Lagoon Nebula (or Messier 8), another vibrant stellar nursery glowing about 4,000 light-years away. You can actually spot the Lagoon with just a pair of binoculars or a small telescope. At its heart is a cluster of young, massive stars—their intense radiation lights up the surrounding gas and shapes the swirling clouds into intricate patterns. The Lagoon nebula provides scientists with a great place to study the earliest stages of star formation—how giant clouds collapse, how star clusters take shape, and how newborn stars start to reshape their environment. This expansive image of Trifid and Lagoon together exposes an intricate web of dust lanes and star clusters that make this part of the Milky Way come alive with cosmic activity. The exquisite detail in the structure of the nebulosity shown here demonstrates the exceptional quality of Rubin's entire system—from its light-collecting power, to its sensitive camera, to its efficient data transfer and processing system. Over ten years, Rubin Observatory will take millions of images and will image each place in the sky, including this one, about 800 times. Every time we look at the Universe in a new way, we discover new things we never could have predicted—and with Rubin we will see more than we ever have before. The image was captured by Rubin Observatory using the 3200-megapixel LSST Camera—the largest digital camera in the world. We invite you to zoom in and explore the details in this unique image! Image by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory The concept for the project was conceived roughly 30 years ago to maximize the study of open questions in astronomy with cutting-edge instrumentation. Construction began in 2014 in Chile's Cerro Pachón, at an altitude of 8,900 feet. Originally named the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, it was renamed in 2019 in honor of the American astronomer Vera C. Rubin , whose work provided the first observational evidence of dark matter. When the observatory begins science operations in earnest later in 2025, its instruments will yield a deluge of astronomical data that will be too overwhelming to process manually. (Each night, the observatory will generate around 20 terabytes of data .) So computer algorithms will sift through the large volumes of data, helping researchers flag any patterns or rare events in a particular patch of sky over time. Astronomers expect high-quality observations taken with the telescope will help map out the structure of the universe, find comets and potentially hazardous asteroids in our solar system, and detect exploding stars and black holes in distant galaxies. The Vera Rubin Observatory lit by a patch of light at sunrise. Photograph by Tomás Munita, National Geographic The observatory will also examine the optical counterparts of gravitational wave events—ripples in the fabric of space caused by some of the most energetic processes in the cosmos. By studying these events, astronomers hope to uncover the secrets of the invisible forces that shape the universe like dark matter and dark energy. 'Those first few images really show the results of those 10 years of really hard and meticulous work that the whole team has put into it, ranging from designing, simulating, to assembling, characterizing and calibrating every single part of the observatory, telescope, camera, the data pipeline, everything was really done very meticulously,' said Sandrine Thomas, deputy director of Rubin Observatory and the observatory's telescope and site scientist, at the June press conference. 'I really feel privileged to have worked with such a talented and dedicated multinational team,' Thomas added. 'It's really impressive.'
National Geographic
4 days ago
- Science
- National Geographic
The 4 biggest mysteries the new Vera Rubin Observatory could solve
No telescope has basked in the night sky quite like this before. Here's what it could reveal about the universe. Vera Rubin Observatory, its dome reflecting the last sunlight at sunset in Chile. May 30, 2025. Photographs by Tomás Munita On a mountaintop in Chile's sprawling Atacama Desert, a new telescope has turned its mechanical eyes to the heavens, stargazing with unprecedented intensity. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will take hundreds of pictures, every night, for the next 10 years. Astronomers around the world are absolutely giddy over Rubin, which is named for the late astronomer who discovered evidence for the existence of dark matter . The observatory's mirrors will collect a tremendous amount of light, catching the glint of very faint, faraway objects. That light will be focused into the largest digital camera on the planet, a 3,200-megapixel camera the size of an SUV, capable of producing pictures from multiple wavelengths of light. Instead of focusing on one segment of sky for hours at a time, Rubin is designed to take in a wide field of view, swiveling every five seconds to stare at a new spot with minimal shakiness. Stitched together, the observations will produce unprecedented time-lapse views of the entire night sky from the Southern Hemisphere, revealing a lively universe. The Vera Rubin Observatory will offer an unprecedented view of the universe's wonders. Chile's new Vera Rubin Observatory, May 31, 2025. Rubin is scheduled to begin full operations later this year, after technicians complete some final testing. So where does one point a half-billion dollar telescope? Scientists predict that the observatory will discover millions of asteroids and comets, several million supernova, 17 billion stars in the Milky Way, 20 billion galaxies, and other astrophysical phenomena that may have never been detected before. Our cosmic cup runneth over. Other observatories, on the ground and in space, have granted us countless cosmic wonders, but no telescope has basked in the night sky quite like this before. One might wonder whether 10 million exploding stars is perhaps too many, and indeed, astronomers I spoke with about Rubin say they're a tad overwhelmed. "A hundred years ago, you went to the telescope, you took your data, maybe on a photographic plate, and you brought it home and locked it in your desk drawer," Pauline Barmby, an astronomer at Western University in Canada, says. There will be so much data "that we really have to come up with much different ways of analyzing it," Barmby says. Scientists are ready to sift through the observations, which could help solve some of astronomy's biggest mysteries, from the workings of the solar systems to the large-scale forces driving the future of the universe. Here are the four biggest mysteries the panoramic observatory will investigate. The Milky Way is seen above the observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope. For the last decade, astronomers have pondered about a mystery that stands to completely rewrite science textbooks: Is there actually another planet in our solar system, something the size of Neptune, drifting in the darkness? Scientists refer to this hypothetical world as Planet Nine , and Rubin may settle the matter of its existence. (Pluto, you might have heard , no longer holds the title of the ninth planet in the solar system, having been reclassified, on the grounds of various astronomical definitions, as a dwarf planet in 2006.) The theory for Planet Nine arose out of observations of icy celestial bodies that orbit beyond Neptune, in a region called the Kuiper belt. A handful of these objects seem to be tracing unexpected orbits through space; something other than the sun's gravity appears to be influencing their movements. One explanation is the presence of a giant, unseen planet, exerting enough gravity to mold their orbital journeys. Deputy Observing Specialist Manager Alysha Shugart commands the TMA and Dome from platform 8 at the observatory. The M3 inner mirror, outer M1 mirror and LSST Camera of Simonyi's Survey Telescope at Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. There are other explanations that could explain the strange orbits, from the extravagant (perhaps there's a tiny black hole out there , or evidence for a new theory of gravity ), to the more mundane (maybe there's nothing odd about the orbits, and our picture of the Kuiper belt is just incomplete.) Existing telescopes aren't capable of spotting the faint glow of such a faraway maybe-planet. But Rubin may find Planet Nine within the first year or two operations, says Megan Schwamb , an astronomer at Queen's University, Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Scientists have worked out a search area in the night sky. If the planet is there, "we'll see it like we see Pluto," Schwamb says—a bright pinprick in the inky shadows of the Kuiper belt, reflecting the light of its star. Enormous cables on Level 5, beneath the Telescope Mount Assembly (TMA), at the Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. The Simonyi Survey Telescope at Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. If there's no grand X-marks-the-spot moment for Planet Nine, "that doesn't mean it's not there," Samantha Lawler , an astronomer at Campion College in Canada, says. "It could just be farther out, or it could be smaller or less reflective." Astronomers will need to keep scrutinizing the behavior of trans-Neptunian objects, and Rubin is poised to discover 37,000 trans-Neptunian objects, expanding the current catalog tenfold. In a sea of these newly found celestial bodies, convincing evidence of Planet Nine may float to the surface, or become washed away altogether. While Schwamb and Lawler would be delighted to welcome a new planet, they're thrilled at the prospect of learning more about the realm beyond Neptune, which is intriguing in its own right. The frozen objects in the Kuiper belt are remnants of the formation of our cosmic neighborhood, like eraser shavings brushed off to the side of the page, and astronomers can study them to better understand its bygone eras. "I have no doubt there will be other weird patterns that we see in those orbits that will lead to other interesting ideas about what may or may not be in our solar system now, and how it has changed over time," Lawler says. Among the questions that the Vera Rubin Observatory could help answer: Is there a Planet 9? Scientists hope that the observatory can help map the universe's dark matter. In 2017, a ground-based telescope in Hawaii caught an unusual object hurtling through the solar system, untethered from the gravity of the sun. Oumuamua , as the object was later named, left astronomers with many questions about a previously undiscovered cosmic population, and some wild conjectures about alien origins that are still floating around today. A second surprise object, named Borisov , showed up in 2019, further deepening the mystery. Rubin will provide many more opportunities to study these interstellar objects, which can coast through the galactic hinterlands for hundreds of millions of years before encountering the warmth of a star. These objects appear without warning, and move fast, so they can be difficult to catch—unless you're constantly making time lapses of the night sky. Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope during calibration. Interstellar objects are believed to be ejected from their home systems during planet formation, a notoriously turbulent time. (Bits of our own solar system, hurled away several billions of years ago, are likely floating somewhere in the galaxy.) Some researchers estimate that Rubin, over the course of its decade-long run, may discover between five and 50 interstellar objects. Chris Lintott, an astrophysicist at Oxford, is more optimistic, betting on 100. It's quite the range, which underscores just how new, and exciting, this area of study is. Each time Rubin detects an interstellar object, it will spark a frenetic chase: telescopes around the world and in space will track the target until it zooms out of reach, checking to see how it's moving, what it's made of, and—because why not?—whether it bears signs of artificial technology. Each cosmic wanderer Rubin finds will provide a glimpse of how planet formation may have unfolded across the Milky Way. Are giant planets like Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus common around other stars? Rubin's interstellar catch of the day could help answer that question. Or its findings could indicate these types of planets are rarer than we thought. "If we find very few [interstellar objects], I think we might have to rethink what sort of planetary systems exist in the galaxy," Lintott says. Even with the powerful new observatory, astronomers likely won't be able to trace interstellar objects to their exact starting points "because they've been mixed around the galaxy so much," says Michele Bannister, a planetary astronomer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. But they can analyze their chemical composition to glean information about their home star, including its age. Scientists may even be able to determine if two or more interstellar objects originated from the same cluster of stars. And they can use Rubin's future catalog to test various theories, including whether entire corridors of these interstellar objects exist, winding through the galaxy like ribbons. Even a small sample of them "tells us so much about these processes happening across our whole wonderful, wide galaxy," Bannister says. From interstellar objects to galaxy formation, the new telescope will give astronomers a stunning new view of deep space. The Vera Rubin Observatory is named for the pioneering scientist who explored the mysteries of dark matter. Petr Kubánek, right, and Robinson Godoy Torres checking on actuators and valves inside the M1M3 mirror cells of the Simonyi Survey Telescope, Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025, Galaxies form in a messy process, says Barmby, the Western University astronomer. "There's gas falling in, there's gas getting blown out, there's stars forming, there's stars dying, and all of that stuff happens on super-long timescales that we can't actually watch happen." Sometimes, in the process, stars in one galaxy get taken up by the gravitational force of another. These are known as stellar streams, and the new observatory is expected to reveal many more of these in our own Milky Way, hovering like bees around the shimmering rose of the galaxy. Rubin's observations will allow astronomers to track the motions of individual stars over long periods of time, which can reveal whether they originated inside the Milky Way or came tumbling in from a nearby galaxy. Rubin is also expected to discover more of the small galaxies that orbit the Milky Way, which have unwillingly donated some of those stars. Each galaxy has its own fascinating cosmic personality; one of the smallest has just a few hundred stars, compared to the Milky Way's 10 billion, says Yao-Yuan Mao , an astrophysicist at the University of Utah. He expects that Rubin will discover all the little galaxies that can possibly be observed, not counting those that are situated behind the bright disk of the Milky Way, which will remain forever out of view from Earth's perspective. "We will get a super complete picture of our Milky Way system," Mao says. And by comparing our galaxy system with that of others, astronomers can tackle one of the most animating questions in the field: whether the way the cosmos works here, in our part of it, is the same as everywhere else. "The knowledge that we inferred from studying the Milky Way—is that generally applicable across the universe?" Mao says. "Or is there something special or unique about the Milky Way itself?" Observing Specialist Minhee Hyun, left, and Yijung Kang at the Control Room of Vera Rubin Observatory, Chile. May 30, 2025. As Rubin captures pictures of millions of cosmic objects, the observatory will also be searching for signs of two completely invisible things: dark matter and dark energy. All of the stars, galaxies, gas—all of the matter we can observe—turns out to be just 5 percent of "the total stuff in the universe," says Alex Drlica-Wagner , an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago. The rest is dark matter, a kind of matter that doesn't emit or absorb light, which accounts for 25 percent of the universe's composition, and dark energy, a phantom entity that makes up 70 percent. While scientists have never directly observed either, they've seen the cosmos behaving in certain ways that suggest they must exist. Rubin won't reveal all of their secrets, but the sheer amount of data will serve as a veritable playground for scientists to test their theories about these phenomena. Astronomers first suspected the existence of dark matter in the 1930s when they noticed that some galaxies remained clustered together even though they were traveling fast enough to fly apart, suggesting that another force was keeping the galactic web intact. In the 1970s, Rubin's namesake astronomer discovered a similar effect at the edges of galaxies, where whizzing stars that should have escaped were instead being held tight. The mark of the unseen material can even be found using starlight itself. The observatory's telescope will be the largest digital camera on the planet, a massive 3,200-megapixel camera. Dark matter can bend light as it passes by, making its source—a distant galaxy, for example—appear distorted. Rubin will collect these warped views, allowing astronomers to "map out where the dark matter is by how we see the light bending as it travels to us," Drlica-Wagner says. Those maps can help illuminate the nature of dark-matter particles, including whether they're cold or hot—seemingly small characteristics with the capacity to reshape our understanding of how the universe assembles galaxies. Dark energy is even more mysterious. The idea emerged in the 1990s, when astrophysicists calculated that the universe was expanding faster over time rather than slowing down, which ran counter to laws of physics that governed the rest of the cosmos. Dark energy was determined to be the driving force, although scientists don't know what it actually is, only that it appears to behave differently than anything else in the universe, Drlica-Wagner says. Unlike dark matter, which, like the regular cosmic stuff, is likely made up of some kind of particles, dark energy stretches the very fabric of space, pushing galaxies apart rather than drawing them together. Rubin's massive catalog of exploding stars will come in handy here: Scientists can use certain kinds of supernovas to trace the universe's expansion, and, in turn, dark energy's role in it. Rubin data could confirm or refute new theories that suggest dark energy is changing over time, rather than remaining constant, upending even Einstein's predictions for this perplexing force. The observatory is expected to return so much data, scientists are preparing to be overjoyed—and perhaps overwhelmed. In the end, the most exciting discoveries Rubin makes might be the ones astronomers haven't yet anticipated. Such is the nature of really good new telescopes: the thrill of what we don't know we don't know. "If someone says, I have never seen a six-foot-tall-rabbit, you can say, sure, how hard have you looked?" Michael Wood-Vasey, an astronomer at the University of Pittsburgh who has spent years helping to prepare the Rubin observatory for operations, says. Perhaps the new observatory, with its constant, scouring gaze, will turn up some cosmic rabbits.
India Today
17-06-2025
- Science
- India Today
World's largest digital camera is about to release its first pictures
A moment that could change the world of astronomy and our understanding of the cosmos is set to unfold as the Vera C Rubin Observatory, with the world's largest camera, unveils its first telescope, which has been over two decades in the making, is designed to create the ultimate movie of the night sky using the largest camera ever built, repeatedly scanning the sky to create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of our for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the LSST Camera weighs around 3,000 kilograms, roughly the size of a small car, yet about twice as heavy. It boasts a staggering 3,200-megapixel sensor, equivalent to the combined resolution of 260 modern smartphone cameras. Rubin Observatory's engineering test camera, the Commissioning Camera (ComCam) was removed from the telescope in December 2024. (Photo: VCO) The camera's sheer imaging power is unprecedented: it would take hundreds of ultra-high-definition TV screens to display a single photograph captured by this to peer deep into the cosmos, the camera will enable scientists to observe billions of distant galaxies and faint, nearby objects that were previously beyond ensure the highest image quality, the camera's sensors are kept at an extremely cold temperature of -100C, minimising the number of defective pixels and ensuring the clarity of each shot. The device is also equipped with a sophisticated filter system, allowing it to switch between six massive colour filters — each 75 centimetres across — in under two filters, labelled u, g, r, i, z, and y, span wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared, granting the camera 'superhuman' vision and allowing astronomers to study the universe in unprecedented at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, the LSST Camera was shipped to Chile in May 2024 and is scheduled for installation on the Simonyi Survey Telescope in early 2025. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located on a mountaintop in Chile, will revolutionise the way we explore the cosmos. (Photo: VCO) Once operational, the camera will work in tandem with the observatory's large mirrors, collecting and focusing cosmic light onto its powerful sensors. The resulting data will be transmitted worldwide for processing and capturing the sky in multiple colours over the next decade, the Rubin Observatory's camera will provide scientists with a treasure trove of information, helping to unravel mysteries about the universe's structure, evolution, and the nature of dark matter and dark anticipation builds for the camera's first images, the scientific community and the public alike await a new window into the cosmos. The pictures will be unveiled on June 23.
