Largest digital camera ever built releases first glamour shots of universe
New York:The largest digital camera ever built released its first glamour shots of the universe Monday — including colourful 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 US National Science Foundation and US 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 tantalising 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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Chile Observatory Captures Universe With 3,200-Megapixel Camera
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Rubin Observatory will start showing spectacular images of the sky from June Astronomers around the world are eagerly waiting for the clock to strike 11 am EDT (8:30 pm IST) on June 23 when the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located atop the El Peñón peak of the 2,682-metre-high mountain Cerro Pachón in northern Chile, will showcase online its first spectacular images of the sky. The observatory is named after the American astronomer Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (1928–2016), who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates. This study led her to discover the discrepancy between the predicted and observed angular motion of galaxies, which has been cited by astronomers as evidence for the existence of dark matter. The chief objective of the observatory's telescope, called the Simonyi Survey Telescope (or SST, named after the private donor-couple Charles and Lisa Simonyi), is to carry out a synoptic astronomical survey, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), using its camera, which is the largest digital camera ever built. The LSST camera was built as a multi-institutional project at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford, California, over a seven-year period. It was shipped to the observatory site in Chile exactly a year ago and was installed in March 2025. The SST is a wide-field reflecting telescope with an 8.4 m primary mirror. The optics uses a novel three-mirror design that allows the telescope to deliver sharp images over a very wide 3.5o-diameter field of view. The images will be recorded by the mind-boggling 3.2 gigapixel charge-coupled device (CCD) imaging LSST camera—roughly the same number of pixels as 260 modern cell phone sensors—which itself is of the size of a small car and weighs about 3 tonnes. The observatory is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy of the US government. To produce an image of the night sky, the Rubin Observatory's large mirrors first collect the light arriving from the cosmos. After bouncing through the mirrors, the light gets focussed by the camera's three lenses onto the image sensors. When taking an image of the sky, the camera uses one of six different coloured filters, u, g, r, i, z, and y, ranging from ultraviolet (u), which is outside the human range of vision, through visible colours (g, r, i), and outside the human range of vision in the other direction into the infrared (i, z, y). The filters are housed in a carousel so that they can be easily switched during observations. However, the geometry of the carousel only allows it to hold five filters at once. The sixth filter is housed in a special storage stand separate from the camera, and a device called the filter loader is used to exchange a particular filter when needed with one in the carousel. Compared with filters in normal cameras, these filters are big, each is 75 cm across. A sophisticated machine called the auto-changer is capable of changing the filters in under two minutes. One would need hundreds of ultra-high-definition TV screens to display a single image taken by this camera. Its sensor needs to be kept extremely cold (about −100°C) to limit the number of defective (bright) pixels in images. These images and videos will be the first of many that Rubin will release over the course of the next decade as the camera and telescope conduct a sweep of the entire visible southern sky every three to four nights. In doing so, the Rubin Observatory's telescope will produce the most detailed time-lapse view of the cosmos ever.
India Today
4 days ago
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World's largest digital camera unveils dazzling first images of the universe
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, perched atop Cerro Pachon in Chile, has released the first breathtaking images from the world's largest digital camera, offering an unprecedented glimpse into the initial 'first look' shots, unveiled Monday, showcase vibrant scenes of nebulas, stars, and galaxies—heralding a new era in astronomical observatory's 3,200-megapixel camera, the largest ever constructed, captured the colorful Trifid and Lagoon nebulas—vast clouds of gas and dust located thousands of light-years from Earth in the constellation These images, composed from hundreds of exposures taken over just seven hours, reveal intricate details and previously hidden structures within these stellar nurseries. The LSST Camera at the heart of Rubin Observatory captures extremely fine features in distant galaxies, stars, and other celestial objects. (Photo: VCRO) Also featured are dazzling spiral galaxies within the Virgo Cluster, including two bright blue spirals, and a mosaic of millions of stars and galaxies, some never before by the US National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, the $810 million observatory is set to scan the southern sky every three to four nights for the next decade, aiming to image 20 billion galaxies and discover countless new asteroids and celestial phenomena. advertisementIn its first test observations alone, the Rubin Observatory identified thousands of asteroids, including several near-Earth objects, none of which pose a threat to our planet. Rubin will generate approximately 20 terabytes of data per night, plus an additional 15 petabyte catalog database. (Photo: VCRO) Named after pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin—whose work provided the first compelling evidence for dark matter—the observatory is poised to deepen our understanding of the universe's most elusive mysteries, including dark energy and the nature of cosmic evolution.'The Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined,' said Brian Stone, acting director of the National Science Foundation. The amount of data gathered by Rubin Observatory in its first year alone will be greater than that collected by all other optical observatories combined. (Photo: VCRO) Scientists and astronomers worldwide are eagerly anticipating the observatory's full scientific mission, which promises to transform our view of the cosmos and inspire new generations of more images are released, the world will watch as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory continues its groundbreaking journey, mapping the universe in stunning detail and revealing the ever-changing tapestry of the night sky- Ends
