Latest news with #LSSTCamera
Vox
2 days ago
- Science
- 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!
New York Post
6 days 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.
India Today
7 days ago
- Science
- India Today
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
Scientific American
23-06-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Majestic First Images from Rubin Observatory Show Universe in More Detail Than Ever Before
Editor's Note (6/23/25): This story will be updated with additional images and details shortly after 11 A.M. EDT. Welcome to a mind-blowing new era of astronomy. The long-awaited Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a cutting-edge new telescope perched atop a mountain in Chile, is releasing its first images of the universe on June 23—and its views are just as jaw-dropping as scientists hoped. (The observatory is holding a celebratory event today at 11 A.M. EDT to reveal additional images that you can watch a livestream of on YouTube. In addition, organizations are hosting watch parties open to the public around the world.) On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. The new images come from only 10 hours of observations—an eyeblink compared with the telescope's first real work, the groundbreaking, 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project. On display are billowing gas clouds that are thousands of light-years away from our solar system and millions of sparkling galaxies —all emblematic of the cosmic riches that the observatory will ultimately reveal. 'In a lot of ways, it almost doesn't matter where we look,' said Aaron Roodman, a physicist at Stanford University and program lead for the Rubin Observatory's LSST Camera, in a preview press conference held on June 9. 'We're going to see changing objects; we're going to see moving objects; we're going to get a view of thousands and thousands of galaxies of stars in any field we look at,' he said. 'In some sense, we could have looked anywhere and gotten fantastic images.' In the end, the team decided to share several mosaics of images from the observatory that highlight its extremely wide field of view, which can capture multiple alluring targets in a single snapshot. The view above of the Triffid Nebula (top right) and Lagoon Nebula includes data from 678 individual images captured by the Rubin Observatory. Scientists stack and combine images in this way to see farther and fainter into the universe. The Triffid Nebula, also known as M20, and the Lagoon Nebula, also known as M8, are star-forming regions both located several thousand light-years away from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. The observatory also captured an initial view of the Virgo Cluster, a massive clump of galaxies located in the constellation of the same name. Individual detail images (at top and below) show a mix of bright Milky Way stars against a backdrop of myriad more distant galaxies. In addition, the team has released a teaser video of a stunning zoomable view of some 10 million galaxies that was created by combining some 1,100 images taken by the new observatory. The Rubin Observatory has promised to reveal additional imagery during the unveiling event later today, including the full video of the massive view of countless galaxies and another video depicting the more than 2,000 asteroids the telescope has already discovered in just 10 hours of observations. These first glimpses from Rubin showcase the observatory's unprecedented discovery power. The telescope will survey the entire southern sky about once every three days, creating movies of the cosmos in full color and jaw-dropping detail. 'We've been working on this for so many years now,' says Yusra AlSayyad, an astronomer at Princeton University and the Rubin Observatory's deputy associate director for data management. 'I can't believe this moment has finally come.'
National Geographic
23-06-2025
- 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.'
