Latest news with #T.Matsopoulos
New York Post
14 hours ago
- Science
- New York Post
New Vera Rubin Observatory discovers 2,000 unknown asteroids within 10 hours
While about 20,000 previously unknown asteroids are discovered every year by telescopes around the world and spacecraft in orbit, the first images by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory revealed 2,000 undiscovered asteroids taken during about 10 hours of scanning the night sky. There are dozens of telescopes on Earth and satellites in the sky searching for new objects that might pose a threat to our planet. The National Science Foundation-Department of Energy's Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile was not built to be an all-in-one asteroid detector. Advertisement Still, as a fast-moving, machine-learning facility, the observatory is the most effective at spotting interstellar objects passing through the solar system, according to the NSF. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory took two decades to complete and was named after the American astronomer credited with the first evidence of dark matter. Later this year, work will begin creating the largest astronomical movie yet of the Southern Hemisphere, known as the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, using a camera of the same name. The LSST Camera is the largest digital camera in the world with a field of view of about 45 times the area of the full Moon in the night sky. One image would need 400 Ultra HD TV screens to display. Advertisement 5 The first images by the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory revealed 2,000 undiscovered asteroids taken in just 10 hours. 5 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. AP On Monday, the Rubin team revealed the first images taken by the observatory, including parts of the Milk Way and beautiful spiral galaxies. Among the first images were more than 2,000 asteroids, including seven near-Earth asteroids previously undocumented in NASA's Small-Body Database. A timelapse video shows how the Observatory's powerful camera tracked the moving dots in the sky. On night one, nearly 1,000 asteroids were found. Advertisement 5 Authorities and scientists attend a simultaneous conference with the United States, after the first images of deep space captured by the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile were revealed, in Santiago on June 23, 2025. AFP via Getty Images 5 A drone view of NSFâDOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory during the First Look observing campaign. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/T. Matsopoulos 5 This image provided by the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory shows a small section of the observatory's total view of the Virgo cluster. AP By the end of a week of observations lasting a few hours each night, the observatory had found more than 2,100 never-before-seen in our solar system in just a fraction of the night sky it will eventually scan. Advertisement These new asteroids, including seven near-Earth asteroids, pose no danger to our planet. According to the NSF, Rubin will discover millions of new asteroids within the first two years of observations.
New York Post
2 days 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.
