Latest news with #RubinObservatory
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
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Rubin Observatory Data Flood Will Let the Universe Alert Astronomers 10 Million Times a Night
Bang! Whiz! Pop! The universe is a happening place—full of exploding stars, erupting black holes, zipping asteroids, and much more. And astronomers have a brand-new, superpowerful eye with which to see the changing cosmos: the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The Rubin Observatory released its first images last week, and they're stunning—vast, glittering star fields that show off the telescope's massive field of view and spectacularly deep vision. But two of the endeavor's most compelling aspects are difficult to convey in any individual image, no matter how spectacular: the sheer amount of data Rubin will produce and the speed with which those data will flood into astronomers' work. 'We can detect everything that changes, moves and appears,' says Yusra AlSayyad, an astronomer at Princeton University and Rubin's deputy associate director for data management. Any time something happens in Rubin's expansive view, the observatory will automatically alert scientists who may be interested in taking a closer look. The experience will be like receiving personalized notifications from the universe. [Sign up for Today in Science, a free daily newsletter] That sounds straightforward enough—until you hear the numbers. 'We're expecting approximately 10,000 alerts per image and 10 million alerts per night,' AlSayyad continues. 'It's way too much for one person to manually sift through and filter and monitor themselves.' AlSayyad compares Rubin's data stream to a dashcam or a video doorbell that constantly films everything in its view. 'You can't just sit there and watch it,' she says. 'In order to make use of that video feed, you need data management.' For Rubin, that means building a static image of the sky—a background template, so to speak—against which any changes will be easy to spot. The telescope will construct this static view within the first year or so of regular operations. Once the background image for a particular section of the sky is ready, the real flood will begin. As the telescope snaps its gigantic photographs, algorithms will first automatically correct for effects such as stray light from the sky and image-blurring atmospheric turbulence. Then the algorithms will compare those tweaked images with the static template, marking every little difference—an expected 10,000 in each snapshot. There will be approximately 1,000 images per night, night after night, for as long as Rubin remains in operations. Astronomers love data, but no one has that kind of time in a day. So each individual scientist (amateurs can sign up, too) must first enroll with the Rubin Observatory's so-called alert brokers. Users can request alerts about supernovae or asteroids, for example, then set constraints on just how interesting an event should be to trigger a notification. Such limitations are important because, again, fielding 10 million alerts per night is an untenable prospect for anyone. 'It really is a kind of overwhelming scale of data,' says Eric Bellm, an astronomer at the University of Washington and Rubin's alert production science lead. And that flood will continue for 10 years straight as the Rubin Observatory executes its signature project, dubbed the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). During this period, the telescope will zip its view across the sky in a carefully choreographed dance that will ultimately produce the best high-definition movie of the heavens that humanity has ever conceived. Rubin's scientists have already sketched the basic survey, says Federica Bianco, an astronomer and data scientist at the University of Delaware and deputy project scientist at the Rubin Observatory. But many details will be worked out along the way, which will let them program the telescope to adapt to the astronomical community's interests, as well as any sudden celestial surprises. 'Ten years ago we were not really seriously thinking of gravitational-wave counterparts, which is all the rage today,' Bianco says. (These counterparts are the light-emitting sources of gravitational waves, the ripples in spacetime that scientists first measured in September 2015 using the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) detectors.) 'We truly believe that LSST itself will discover new things, will transform the way in which we think about the universe,' she adds. That means making the observatory responsive to the cosmos. 'If that is true, then we need to enable changes that allow us to capture these new physics, these new phenomena.' For some science, the discoveries will be limited by whatever the sky is gracious enough to give—a star must explode for the Rubin Observatory to spot a new supernova, for example. But a particularly intriguing case comes from planetary science within our own solar system. For centuries, astronomers have snagged observations of asteroids and comets—respectively, rocky and icy objects that swarm between and around the planets as all orbit the sun. All that effort has put more than 1.3 million asteroids in our catalogs, but astronomers expect Rubin to identify perhaps three times that many new objects—practically without trying. When the LSST survey is running at full capacity, alerts for potential newfound asteroids will be sent straight to an international group called the Minor Planet Center, which tends a database of all such space rocks. 'We just sort of sit back and these objects will be discovered and reported to us,' says Meg Schwamb, an astronomer at Queen's University Belfast. Schwamb co-chairs the LSST Solar System Science Collaboration and has worked to estimate what the telescope will find in our cosmic neighborhood. And because these space rocks are already out there, rattling through the solar system, Rubin will rack up discoveries quickly, Schwamb and her colleagues predict—with some 70 percent of new objects discovered during the survey's first two years. 'That, I think, is mind-blowing. That really allows us to start being able to watch these objects,' Schwamb says. 'There's instant gratification.' Not everything Rubin will study is so speedy and unsubtle; the observatory will also be an astonishingly powerful tool for probing the enigmatic dark matter that produces no light yet holds galaxies together and outweighs the normal, familiar matter we know in our daily lives. One way astronomers study this lightless stuff is to measure how dark matter gravitationally warps light from more distant objects. Researchers use that telltale effect to map the enigmatic substance's distribution across the universe. Decades ago Anthony Tyson, now an astrophysicist at the University of California Davis, wanted to do just that. 'I proposed a project to [what was then] the biggest telescope, the biggest camera that was in existence, and got turned down,' he recalls. In the long run, that failed proposal sent him down the path to build his own superlative telescope, which boasts the biggest digital camera in the world, at the Rubin Observatory, where he was founding director and is now chief scientist. In the short run, however, he took an approach that now seems prophetic. 'I decided maybe I should make another application to take the same data but for a different purpose,' he says. He and his colleagues wrote up a different proposal for the same telescope, this time pitching a study of radio-bright plasma jets emanating from around the supermassive black holes at the core of galaxies. He got the observing time—as well as the warped light from invisible clumps of dark matter strewn along the telescope's line of sight. 'That was the scam,' he quips. Now, decades later, the Rubin Observatory is opening astronomers' eyes to a new view of the universe. And while it won't observe radio light, it certainly will observe oodles of active galactic nuclei—by the tens of millions, in fact, repaying Tyson's slyly earned telescope time many times over.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
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First close-up of "cotton candy" nebula captured by world's largest telescope
The world's largest telescope captured a deep-space nebula — an interstellar cloud of gas and dust that can produce new stars — in stunning detail, providing the first close-up view to date of the cosmic phenomenon. Scientists recently unveiled images from Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new station located in the Andes Mountains of Chile and funded by the United States, which houses a powerful telescope containing the biggest digital camera on the planet. Its precision allows the telescope to peer far into space, with galaxies tens of millions of light-years away from Earth among the subjects of the observatory's debut portraits of cosmos. Also pictured is the "cotton candy" nebula, which earned that nickname because of its bright pink and blue pattern. Officially, the swirling mass is called the Trifid Nebula, and it exists about 5,000 light-years from Earth, according to the Rubin Observatory. Nearby is the Lagoon Nebula, another colorful cloud, which is located about 4,000 light-years away and appears alongside Trifid in the observatory's latest images. Both are in the constellation Sagittarius, according to the Rubin Observatory. Zoomed-in views of the nebulae are seen in a video shared by the observatory, showcasing the Trifid and Lagoon formations at a scale never seen before. The composite image was created from more than 678 different exposures taken over a 7-hour period by the camera that powers the observatory's massive telescope. The telescope's long-term mission is set to begin later this year, when it will perform nightly scans of the sky for the next decade in an effort to learn more about the early universe and some of its properties that still are not well-understood, like dark energy. Brian Stone, the chief of staff at the National Science Foundation who currently performs the duties of the foundation's director, said in a statement that the Rubin Observatory is expected to "capture more information about our Universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined." "Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the Universe," his statement said. Watch: Senate passes Trump budget bill after Vance casts tie-breaking vote A deeper look at Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz" migrant detention facility H.R. McMaster on impact of Israel, U.S. strikes on Iran
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Rubin Observatory's first images flaunt millions of galaxies. Take a look.
A massive new telescope with the world's largest digital camera is expected to create the most comprehensive digital movie of the night sky ever attempted, capturing about 40 billion space objects. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in northern Chile released its first images to the public on Monday. Later this year, it will begin its primary project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, sweeping across the entire visible southern sky every three to four nights for at least a decade. The goal is to create the most detailed time-lapse view of the cosmos so far, allowing astronomers to track objects that move and those that change brightness. In just 10 hours of test observations, Rubin has already demonstrated its power. It captured over 2,000 previously unknown asteroids in our solar system, plus millions of stars and galaxies. The rollout is a sneak peek at what the observatory will do for the next 10 years: Each night, it'll snap about 1,000 high-definition photos — providing a veritable "firehose of data," researchers say. For astronomers, this means catching sight of supernova explosions, pulsating stars, and near-Earth asteroids and comets. Some of these images could reveal ripples in space-time, offering hints of invisible forces shaping the cosmos. For the rest of us, it means better planetary defense, potential discoveries of unknown objects, and, of course, beautiful eye candy. "Between objects in most astronomical pictures, it kind of looks like inky black space. That's what you've seen before, but that's not what you saw here," said Steven Ritz, the project scientist for Rubin's construction, during a livestreamed news conference. "That inky black space actually is full of stuff. It's full of galaxies. It's full of all kinds of interesting things." SEE ALSO: Spectacular Webb telescope image shows a stellar death like never before Two spiral galaxies appear to tumble through space in this first-look image of a portion of the Virgo cluster. Credit: RubinObs / NOIRLab / SLAC / NSF / DOE / AURA The observatory, built by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, sits atop a desert mountain, Cerro Pachón, high in the Chilean Andes, where the skies are clear, dry, and stable. It's named for astronomer Vera Rubin, who uncovered early evidence of so-called "dark matter," a mysterious-yet-abundant substance in space that doesn't shine or interact with light, according to NASA. Now Rubin's namesake observatory will try to crack the code of that material and probe some of the other biggest cosmic mysteries. With a primary mirror that stretches 28 feet wide, Rubin isn't the biggest telescope in the world — but it may be among the busiest. It's equipped with a hulking digital camera that's the size of a small car and twice as heavy. With 3,200 megapixel resolution, a full picture from the camera would require a wall of 400 TVs covering a basketball court. The telescope's unusual design, which allows the large instrument to swivel nimbly, makes all of this possible. At full tilt, the 300-ton structure can revolve all the way around in about a half-minute, with magnetic motors allowing it to coast on a thin layer of oil. "No other large telescope in the world can move this fast," said Željko Ivezić, director of the observatory's construction. "It moves around in seconds. Other large telescopes take minutes." The observatory has the potential to discover 5 million new asteroids in just two years. Over the next 10 years, Rubin will take pictures of about 20 billion galaxies. In its debut, the telescope turned its eye toward two familiar showstoppers in deep space: the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas in the constellation Sagittarius. These colorful clouds of gas and dust, each thousands of light-years away, are baby star nurseries. The Trifid nebula, top right, glows a pinkish hue surrounded in blue above the sprawling Lagoon nebula, both thousands of light-years from Earth. Credit: RubinObs / NOIRLab / SLAC / NSF / DOE / AURA The Trifid glows with pinks and blues, carved by young stars punching through the haze. Nearby, the Lagoon sprawls in a soft rosy glow, its tangled wisps shaped by stellar winds. Rubin's early snapshots also include a bustling corner of the universe: the Virgo Cluster, a grouping of galaxies bound together by gravity. Among them are two luminous spiral galaxies that shine in bright, electric blue — cosmic pinwheels spinning in the dark. The sky survey is expected to undertake the biggest supernova hunt ever — specifically focusing on exploding stars known as Type Ia supernovas. Myriad galaxies stretch across this frame, which only shows a portion of the Virgo cluster. Credit: RubinObs / NOIRLab / SLAC / NSF / DOE / AURA These events happen when a white dwarf — a small, dying star — gets too heavy and blows apart. The supernovas, sometimes dubbed "cosmic yardsticks," shine brightly for a short time and give off a predictable, known amount of light. That makes them perfect for measuring distance in space: The farther the supernova, the fainter it appears to us. By collecting light from these blasts, scientists can figure out how fast the universe has been stretching as that light traveled here. This matters because scientists are trying to learn more about dark energy — a mysterious force that seems to be, counterintuitively, pushing the universe to expand faster over time. By comparing millions of these explosions across different distances, Rubin might be able to piece together whether dark energy is changing, which could rewrite what we know about the universe's age and what's to come in the future. "When I look at the images, I often don't pay attention to the beautiful nearby galaxies. I look at the little fuzz balls," said Aaron Roodman, who leads the team that built the camera. "Many of those galaxies are 5 or perhaps even 10 billion light-years away and have up to 100 billion stars in them, and those are the galaxies actually that we use the most if we want to study the expansion of the universe and dark energy."
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
First Images From the World's Largest Camera Are Paving the Future of Astronomy
First Images From the World's Largest Camera Are Paving the Future of Astronomy originally appeared on L.A. Mag. On June 23rd, over 300 public and private Watch Parties tuned in to get a glimpse of the First Look images from Rubin Observatory, according to a Rubin Observatory press release. The reason? This observatory features the world's largest ever camera, an 8.4-meter telescope, and is at the forefront of the current astronomy works so well for three primary reasons: its scope, the detail of the images, and the time it takes to capture said images. For example, the image taken of the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae utilized two trillion pixels of data and a combination of 678 exposures to create a 5-gigapixel image. Taken in just under 7.2 hours, this stunning image layers the large amount of different exposures to cast the image into enormous detail. Coupled with the extremely wide range of the camera, viewers can now see the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae in striking and comprehensive first images are the product of over two decades of work from a global team, according to Željko Ivezić, Director of Rubin Observatory Construction. The facility, jointly funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation, was built at the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile, where the high elevation, dry air, and dark skies provide an ideal location for astronomical observations. According to Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the observatory 'demonstrates that the United States remains at the forefront of international basic science and highlights the remarkable achievements we get when the many parts of the national research enterprise work together.' Brian Stone, performing the duties of NSF director, details these 'remarkable achievements' by stating how Rubin will 'capture more information about our Universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined,' including information about dark matter and dark observatory's relationship with dark matter is deeply embedded within the observatory's history, specifically concerning its namesake. The observatory is named after Vera C. Rubin, a pioneering U.S. astronomer who found conclusive evidence for dark matter. Dark matter and dark energy are important because they are key players in what is facilitating our universe's expansion, according to NASA. So what's next for the Vera Rubin Observatory? According to CNN, the observatory will make the first scientific observations of the Southern Hemisphere (also known as 'first light') on July 4th. Looking ahead, over the next ten years, the observatory will take 1000 images of the Southern Hemisphere every night as part of the observatory's primary mission to meticulously capture the universe's changes: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. These images will not only be important for astronomical discoveries, but also for planetary defense, as having more precise images will allow us to better observe and predict asteroids that may potentially impact the Moon or the Earth. Additionally, the observatory seeks to bring cutting-edge astronomical data and images to the general public through the interactive, user-friendly SkyViewer app. The app offers both guided and free-form exploration of select Rubin images as well as an interactive sonification that encourages users to experience the wonder of the cosmos through an endless soundscape. This story was originally reported by L.A. Mag on Jun 27, 2025, where it first appeared.
Geek Wire
5 days ago
- Science
- Geek Wire
University of Washington celebrates Rubin Observatory's debut — and looks ahead
University of Washington astronomer Zeljko Ivezic talks about the Rubin Observatory — a project in which he played a leading role — with an image of the facility displayed behind him. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) It's been more than two decades since the University of Washington helped kick off the effort to get the Vera C. Rubin Observatory built in Chile — and now that it's finished, UW astronomers are gearing up to get in on the first decade of discoveries. The university's role in the past, present and future of the Rubin Observatory and its 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, literally took center stage in front of a packed house at UW's Kane Hall on Thursday night. UW astronomer Zeljko Ivezic, who served as director of Rubin construction and is shifting his focus to his role as head of science operations for LSST, recalled the night of April 15, when Rubin's first test images came in for fine tuning. 'We were all so happy, and we are still happy,' he said. 'We had been dreaming about this night for two decades, and it finally arrived. And not only that, we quickly obtained beautiful data, but also we continued to do so, and every new image was better and better. The observatory is performing beyond all our expectations.' Ivezic showed off the images of swirling galaxies and colorful nebulas that he first unveiled earlier in the week at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. And he talked up an online tool called Skyviewer that allows users to click around the observatory's 3,200-megapixel images and zoom in on details. 'It's an easy-to-use app,' he told the audience. 'When you go home tonight, then you can spend the next few hours just going around. Turn off the light in your room and then look at your screen, and it will be fantastic.' University of Washington Zeljko Ivezic shows off his Rubin Observatory necktie and matching nail polish. The tie is on sale via the Startorialist website. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) The University of Washington's involvement in the Rubin Observatory goes back to the early 2000s, when astronomers began considering how a next-generation sky survey might be accomplished. In its early years, the project was known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (which set the precedent for the LSST acronym). UW was one of four founding partners of the LSST Corporation, an entity that was set up to get the project started. (That nonprofit group, which was subsequently renamed the LSST Discovery Alliance, now has 40 member institutions.) In 2008, the project got a huge boost from Microsoft billionaires Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi — who donated $10 million and $20 million, respectively, to support early work on the telescope's 8.4-meter-wide (28-foot-wide) mirror. As the years went on, support for the project grew, fueled by a high rating in the National Research Council's 2010 Decadal Survey. Eventually, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science allocated hundreds of millions of dollars for building the observatory in Chile, where dry air and dark skies made for optimal viewing conditions. In 2019, the observatory was officially named in honor of astronomer Vera Rubin, who analyzed galactic rotation rates to nail down the first convincing evidence for the existence of dark matter. The survey telescope, meanwhile, was named after Simonyi's family in recognition of his early gift. Today, UW's Rubin Observatory team consists of about 75 faculty members and graduate students, plus scores of undergraduates. University of Washington astronomer Mario Juric, the team's principal investigator, noted that UW played an essential role in getting the observatory up and running. 'None of this would be possible without the Rubin team right here at UW,' he told Thursday night's audience. Members of the University of Washington's team for the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time pose for a group picture after a presentation at UW's Kane Hall. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle) That essential role will continue into the next decade. In partnership with Princeton University, UW's team is responsible for the software that processes the trillions of bytes of image data that are generated by the observatory on a nightly basis. That work meshes with the leading roles in Rubin operations that are performed by the National Science Foundation's NOIRLab and the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. 'We're here to figure out how to build algorithms to get the most out of data, how to make the software work as well as it can,' Juric told GeekWire. Andrew Connolly, another UW astronomer who is the director of the university's eScience Institute, said the university's researchers are relying on machine learning and other artificial intelligence strategies 'to accelerate our discoveries.' 'We build AI that allows us to study the variability in time series data. We build new tools at U Dub to search for the signatures of a distant planet in the outskirts of our solar system,' he said. 'We even use AI to improve the image quality and the sharpness of the images that you see.' Astronomers expect the data from Rubin to reveal millions of previously undetected asteroids in our own solar system, shed light on the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy, track phenomena including gamma-ray bursts and supernovas, and capture images of billions of galaxies repeatedly over the coming decade. James Davenport — who is the newly named director of the university's DiRAC Institute, taking a handoff from Juric — said it's going to be an exciting 10 years. 'We are going to discover things we don't expect,' he said.
