Behold! World's Largest Camera Snaps Millions of Galaxies in First Pics
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has just dropped its very first images. Expected to revolutionize our understanding of the Universe, the new eye on the sky hasn't disappointed.
For 10 hours, the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy facility stared deep into the cosmos, using its powerful camera to record in near-ultraviolet, optical, and near-infrared wavelengths. The result is a tantalizing and exciting set of observations that bode well for the years to come.
"NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our Universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined," says Brian Stone, acting director of the NSF. "Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the Universe."
Rubin's first mission is a 10-year survey of the southern sky called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Every few days, it will observe the entire sky, recording each section around 800 times using the telescope's 3,200-megapixel camera (the largest in the world) to effectively compile an unprecedented 10-year timelapse of the Universe.
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The mission is designed to capture anything that moves, flashes, or pulses – a remit that includes asteroids, comets, supernovae, and pulsars; from taking an asteroid inventory of the Solar System to cataloguing exploding stars billions of light-years away.
In its first images, Rubin demonstrates some of that range, recording an extremely detailed, massive image of the Milky Way Trifid and Lagoon nebulae, two dense molecular clouds bubbling with hidden star formation. In 7.2 hours, the telescope took 678 individual images for a final mosaic coming in at just under 5 gigapixels.
You should go have a play with the interactive zoomable image – it's a delight.
In another image, the observatory showcases its ability to zoom in on a patch of sky, revealing around 10 million galaxies in a tightly focused field of view around the Virgo cluster. There's a zoomable version here.
Finally, the Rubin team revealed the Solar System asteroids the telescope was able to observe – including a whopping 2,104 orbiting bits of rock we've never seen before, in just over 10 hours of observations.
Annually, about 20,000 new asteroids are discovered by all other ground-based telescopes combined – Rubin looks to blow them out of the water.
None of the asteroids discovered by Rubin pose a hazard to Earth, but the discoveries show what a powerful tool the observatory will be in Earth defense against hazardous space rocks.
"Rubin Observatory is the first of its kind: its mirror design, camera size and sensitivity, telescope speed, and computing infrastructure are each in an entirely new category," the NSF and DOE say.
"With Rubin data we will all understand our Universe better, chronicle its evolution, delve into the mysteries of dark energy and dark matter, and reveal answers to questions we have yet to imagine."
Excelsior.
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Vox
8 hours ago
- Vox
How the largest digital camera ever made is revolutionizing our view of space
is a senior editorial director at Vox overseeing the climate teams and the Unexplainable and The Gray Area podcasts. He is also the editor of Vox's Future Perfect section and writes the Good News newsletter. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk. Ten areas in the sky were selected as 'deep fields' that the Dark Energy Camera imaged several times during the survey, providing a glimpse of distant galaxies and helping determine their 3D distribution in the cosmos. The image is teeming with galaxies — in fact, nearly every single object in this image is a galaxy. Last Thursday, I took my son to the Rose Center for Earth and Space at New York's Museum of Natural History. In the Hayden Planetarium, we watched a simulation of the Milky Way bloom above us, while the actor Pedro Pascal — who truly is everywhere — narrated the galactic dance unfolding on the screen. It was breathtaking. But it didn't compare to what was blasted around the world just a few days later, as the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory began broadcasting its 'first light' — its inaugural images of the cosmos. I found myself pinching-to-zoom through a picture that contains roughly 10 million galaxies in a single frame, a vista so vast it would take 400 4-K TVs to display at full resolution. I could hold the universe itself on my screen. Eye on the sky Perched 8,660 feet up Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes, where the crystal-clear nights provide an exceptionally clear window into space, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory began construction in 2015 with funding from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the US Department of Energy. Named for the pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin, whose work on galaxy rotation helped prove the existence of dark matter, the observatory was built to run a single, audacious experiment: the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time. It will photograph the entire Southern Hemisphere sky every few nights to tackle four grand goals: unmask dark matter and dark energy, inventory the Solar System's asteroids and comets, chart the Milky Way's formation, and capture every transient cosmic event. What makes Rubin so special is its eye, which is a marvel. At its core is a 27-foot-wide dual mirror cast from 51,900 pounds of molten glass that is still light enough to sweep across the sky in seconds. The mirror directs a flow of light from the cosmic depths to the 3.2-gigapixel LSST Camera, a 5-by-10-feet digital jumbotron that is the largest digital camera ever made. It's like a massive magnifying glass paired with the world's sharpest DSLR: Together they capture a swath of the night sky equivalent to 45 full moons every 30 seconds. Related Astronomers spotted something perplexing near the beginning of time And those images, which will be continuously shared with the world, are jaw-dropping. The headlining shot from Rubin's debut, nicknamed 'Cosmic Treasure Chest,' stitches together 1,185 exposures of the Virgo Cluster, our nearest major collection of galaxies, some 55 million light-years away. But the Rubin Observatory is about much more than producing pretty cosmic wallpaper. Its unprecedented scale gives it the ability to search for answers to grand questions about space science. The NSF notes that Rubin will gather more optical data in its first year than all previous ground telescopes combined, turning the messy, ever-changing sky into a searchable movie. Cosmic Treasure Chest. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA It's not just pretty pictures As I've written before, the world has made great strides in planetary defense: Our ability to detect and eventually deflect asteroids that could be on a collision course with Earth. Rubin has already begun paying dividends toward that goal. In a mere 10 hours of engineering data, its detection software identified 2,104 brand-new asteroids — including seven near-Earth objects, heavenly bodies whose orbit will bring them near-ish our planet. That haul came from just a thumbnail-sized patch of sky; once Rubin begins its nightly scan of the whole Southern Hemisphere, it's projected to catalog over 5 million asteroids and roughly 100,000 NEOs over the next decade, tripling today's inventory. That will help NASA finally reach its congressionally mandated target of identifying 90 percent of the 25,000 city-killer-class NEOs (those over 140 meters) estimated to be out there. How powerful is Rubin's eye? 'It took 225 years of astronomical observations to detect the first 1.5 million asteroids,' Jake Kurlander, a grad student astronomer at the University of Washington, told 'Rubin will double that number in less than a year.' Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA And the images that Rubin captures will go out to the entire world. Its Skyviewer app will allow anyone to zoom in and out of the corners of space that catch Rubin's eye, including celestial objects so new that most of them don't have names. Looking at the app gives you a sense of what it must have been like to be one of the first human beings, gazing up at a sky filled with wonder and mystery. Finding perspective in a pixel It might seem strange to highlight a telescope at a moment when the world feels as if it is literally on fire. But the Vera Rubin Observatory isn't just a triumph of international scientific engineering, or an unparalleled window on the universe. It is the ultimate perspective provider. If you open the Virgo image and zoom all the way out, Earth's orbit would be smaller than a single pixel. Yet that same pixel is where thousands of engineers, coders, machinists, and scientists quietly spent a decade building an eye that can watch the rest of the universe breathe, and then share those images with all of their fellow humans. Seeing Rubin's images brought to mind the lines of Walt Whitman's 'When I Heard the Learn'd Astronomer.' I wander'd off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars. On days when life on our little world feels chaotic, Rubin's first-light view offers a valuable reminder: We're just one tiny part in a tapestry of 10 million galaxies, looking up from our planet at the endless stars. A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News newsletter. Sign up here!
USA Today
9 hours ago
- USA Today
Cosmic wonders from Chile, record heat wave and July Fourth food: The week in review
New window to the universe A 'cosmic treasure chest' has been opened with the debut of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in northern Chile as astronomers released startling first images, including one of a southern region of the Virgo Cluster capturing a stunning 10 million galaxies. That was just 0.05% of the 20 billion galaxies the telescope is expected to capture with its car-sized digital camera in the coming decade. Its principal mission: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, an ultrawide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the universe, according to the facility's website − 'the largest astronomical movie of all time.' 13.5 billion years back in time: James Webb space telescope creates a vast cosmic map Heat wave is one for the books A dangerous heat wave smothered a large chunk of the central and eastern United States for days before easing, sending temperature records into oblivion as a huge atmospheric 'heat dome' trapped the scorching air over more than 150 million people. Baltimore's Inner Harbor soared to 104 degrees, just short of the 106 degrees in Death Valley, California. The town of North Hartland, Vermont, hit 101 degrees − hotter than Yuma, Arizona. In Paterson, New Jersey, graduation ceremonies were rescheduled for five high schools. And in the nation's capital, the Washington Monument was closed for most of the week as temperatures topped 100. July Fourth and your wallet Classic Fourth of July barbecues will cost a little more this year: $130 for food and drinks for a gathering of 10 people, a 2.2% increase from last year. That's according to a Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute analysis of data from NielsenIQ, which tracks food scanned at U.S. retailers. The menu used in the analysis: barbecued chicken breasts, beef sliders, hot dogs, fruit, vegetable platter, potato salad, cornbread, cake, apple pie, ice cream, beer, wine and sodas. But lots of people will pay nothing, according to another survey by Coupon Follow − the 1 out of 3 people who don't plan to celebrate Independence Day at all. Alanis Morissette didn't have it easy Alanis Morissette's early days in the music industry were no strawberry festival. When faced with the 'lovely patriarchy' of the '90s, she told The Guardian in an interview, 'there was no one to hide behind,' adding that if men in the industry could not sleep with her, 'they didn't know what to do with me.' She was more of an introvert and had trouble breaking through, she said: "So, tequila – anything that allowed me to be the life of the party. ... Anything that would help me pretend I'm not me." But now, said the singer, 51, who has been open about her addiction struggles, 'there's zero desire to present as something I'm not." Her life in pictures: Alanis Morissette through the years Thunder pour it on to win NBA title Oklahoma City closed out its season with a rumble heard across the NBA. The Thunder dominated the Indiana Pacers 103-91 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals, pulling ahead in the third and fourth quarters after Indiana lost star guard Tyrese Haliburton to a torn Achilles tendon late in the first quarter. The championship is Oklahoma City's first since relocating from Seattle in 2008; for the Pacers, close wasn't good enough for their second straight season with a strong playoff run before falling to the eventual NBA champs. Indiana has never won an NBA title. − Compiled and written by Robert Abitbol, USA TODAY copy chief
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
‘New era in astronomy.' Penn State helps develop world's most powerful survey telescope
Professors at Penn State helped develop the world's most powerful survey telescope, which released its first images earlier this week from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The images capture cosmic phenomena at an 'unprecedented scale,' the observatory said in a press release. For the next 10 years, the observatory will conduct the 'Legacy Survey of Space and Time,' an international project to create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time lapse record of the universe, a release from Penn State says. The university has been an LSST member institution since 2005, and faculty members have had roles on the LSST board and other committees and collaborations. Donald Schneider, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State and the university's representative on the LSST-Discovery Alliance Institutional Board, has been interested in this project since he first heard about it around 2000. J. Anthony Tyson, now the Rubin Observatory LSST chief scientist, came up with the general concept of a telescope that could take deep pictures of the entire sky every night to look for things that moved, changed in brightness, and other aspects, Schneider told the CDT. Penn State joined the collaboration and had roles in both the science collaboration and in project management, he said. The Rubin Observatory on the Cerro Pachón mountaintop in Chile uses a 3,200-megapixel camera the size of a car to scan the entire visible southern sky every three to four nights. 'The sky will be imaged in six different filters covering the range from blue to near-infrared light. By stitching the resulting clips together, the LSST collaboration will produce the most detailed time-lapse view of the cosmos that has ever existed,' the university said in a release. W. Niel Brandt, the Eberly Family Chair in Astronomy and Astrophysics (and professor of physics at Penn State and co-chair of the LSST Active Galactic Nuclei Science Collaboration), said in a release between the impressive camera and the wide field of view, the Rubin Observatory will 'launch a new era in astronomy.' It will allow them to better detect real-time changes in the sky and rare events, he said. Schneider said the telescope has a large mirror, about 320 inches across, so it can gather a lot of light and detect very faint objects over a large part of the sky. 'You've heard of the James Webb and the Hubble Space Telescope, they can go very deep. They can actually go deeper than the Rubin telescope can, but only over a tiny fraction of the area,' he told the CDT. 'So, when the Rubin takes a picture, it takes 45 full moons. … Every time it takes a picture, it takes that much sky. With the Hubble Space telescope or the James Webb, it's just a tiny fraction of the moon that they can take a picture of.' The first pictures released on Monday were 'spectacular,' Schneider said. Looking at a picture on your TV or computer screen doesn't give the full effect because there aren't enough pixels, so the image is super compressed. 'It's just so compressed, there aren't enough pixels on the TV to show what the picture does. They're 3.2 billion pixels … your eye just can't grasp it, and the TV just can't display it. You need something the size of a basketball court to display it,' he said. 'It takes seven of those pictures every minute throughout the night, so you can imagine how many basketball courts you would have to rent in order to display a night's worth of data.' The facility is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director, said in a press release the Rubin Observatory will 'capture more information about the universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined.' The telescope was designed with many science programs, but one that may be particularly interesting to the public is about near-earth asteroids. Schneider said they know where the big asteroids are, but there are still rocks out there that he thinks are the size of a football field or larger. If one of those hits earth, it would be a bad situation, so Schneider said they need to be able to track them so they can find them early and adjust their orbits. When the first images from the telescope were released this week, he said one thing that impressed him the most was a chart that showed all of the new asteroids they discovered from just one picture. The data gathered during the survey will be public, so you don't need to be a professional astronomer to learn from the project. 'There's a great opportunity for amateur astronomers, or just people that are casually interested in astronomy, or high schools, for example,' he said. 'It would be great lab experiments. You know, you get your part of the sky, what's there? What's interesting? So I'm very excited by this opportunity.'
