Latest news with #VeraC.RubinObservatory
Vox
3 hours 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!
USA Today
5 hours ago
- Science
- 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
GMA Network
a day ago
- Science
- GMA Network
Chile observatory captures the universe with 3,200-megapixel camera
Distant galaxies are seen in an image produced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on Pachon Hill, Coquimbo Region, Chile, June 18, 2025. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/Handout via REUTERS SANTIAGO - Chile's Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which boasts the world's largest digital camera, has begun displaying its first images of the cosmos, allowing astronomers to figure out how the solar system formed and even whether an asteroid poses a threat to Earth. Located on Pachon Hill in the northern region of Coquimbo, the 8.4-meter (27-1/2-foot) telescope has a 3,200-megapixel camera feeding a powerful data processing system. "It's really going to change and challenge the way people work with their data," said William O'Mullane, a project manager focused on data at Vera Rubin. The observatory detected over 2,100 previously unseen asteroids in 10 hours of observations, focusing on a small area of the visible sky. Its ground-based and space-based peers discover in total some 20,000 asteroids a year. O'Mullane said the observatory would allow astronomers to collect huge amounts of data quickly and make unexpected finds. "Rather than the usual couple of observations and writing an (academic) paper. No, I'll give you a million galaxies. I'll give you a million stars or a billion even, because we have them: 20 billion galaxy measurements," he said. The center is named after American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, a pioneer in finding conclusive evidence of the existence of large amounts of invisible material known as dark matter. Each night, Rubin will take some 1,000 images of the southern hemisphere sky, letting it cover the entire southern sky every three or four nights. The darkest skies above the arid Atacama Desert make Chile one of the best places worldwide for astronomical observation. "The number of alerts the telescope will send every night is equivalent to the inboxes of 83,000 people. It's impossible for someone to look at that one by one," said astrophysicist Francisco Foster. "We're going to have to use artificial intelligence tools." — Reuters
Straits Times
a day ago
- Science
- Straits Times
Chile observatory captures the universe with 3,200-megapixel camera
The open star cluster Messier 21 is seen in an image produced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on Pachon Hill, Coquimbo Region, Chile June 12, 2025. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/Handout via REUTERS Globular cluster NGC 6544 is seen in an image produced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on Pachon Hill, Coquimbo Region, Chile June 12, 2025. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/Handout via REUTERS The Trifid Nebula is seen in an image produced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on Pachon Hill, Coquimbo Region, Chile June 12, 2025. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/Handout via REUTERS Distant galaxies are seen in an image produced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on Pachon Hill, Coquimbo Region, Chile June 18, 2025. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/Handout via REUTERS The Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae are seen in an image produced by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, on Pachon Hill, Coquimbo Region, Chile June 12, 2025. RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/Handout via REUTERS SANTIAGO - Chile's Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which boasts the world's largest digital camera, has begun displaying its first images of the cosmos, allowing astronomers to figure out how the solar system formed and even whether an asteroid poses a threat to Earth. Located on Pachon Hill in the northern region of Coquimbo, the 8.4-meter (27-1/2-foot) telescope has a 3,200-megapixel camera feeding a powerful data processing system. "It's really going to change and challenge the way people work with their data," said William O'Mullane, a project manager focused on data at Vera Rubin. The observatory detected over 2,100 previously unseen asteroids in 10 hours of observations, focusing on a small area of the visible sky. Its ground-based and space-based peers discover in total some 20,000 asteroids a year. O'Mullane said the observatory would allow astronomers to collect huge amounts of data quickly and make unexpected finds. "Rather than the usual couple of observations and writing an (academic) paper. No, I'll give you a million galaxies. I'll give you a million stars or a billion even, because we have them: 20 billion galaxy measurements," he said. The center is named after American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, a pioneer in finding conclusive evidence of the existence of large amounts of invisible material known as dark matter. Each night, Rubin will take some 1,000 images of the southern hemisphere sky, letting it cover the entire southern sky every three or four nights. The darkest skies above the arid Atacama Desert make Chile one of the best places worldwide for astronomical observation. "The number of alerts the telescope will send every night is equivalent to the inboxes of 83,000 people. It's impossible for someone to look at that one by one," said astrophysicist Francisco Foster. "We're going to have to use artificial intelligence tools." REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Science
- Yahoo
Chile observatory captures the universe with 3,200-megapixel camera
SANTIAGO (Reuters) -Chile's Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which boasts the world's largest digital camera, has begun displaying its first images of the cosmos, allowing astronomers to figure out how the solar system formed and even whether an asteroid poses a threat to Earth. Located on Pachon Hill in the northern region of Coquimbo, the 8.4-meter (27-1/2-foot) telescope has a 3,200-megapixel camera feeding a powerful data processing system. "It's really going to change and challenge the way people work with their data," said William O'Mullane, a project manager focused on data at Vera Rubin. The observatory detected over 2,100 previously unseen asteroids in 10 hours of observations, focusing on a small area of the visible sky. Its ground-based and space-based peers discover in total some 20,000 asteroids a year. O'Mullane said the observatory would allow astronomers to collect huge amounts of data quickly and make unexpected finds. "Rather than the usual couple of observations and writing an (academic) paper. No, I'll give you a million galaxies. I'll give you a million stars or a billion even, because we have them: 20 billion galaxy measurements," he said. The center is named after American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, a pioneer in finding conclusive evidence of the existence of large amounts of invisible material known as dark matter. Each night, Rubin will take some 1,000 images of the southern hemisphere sky, letting it cover the entire southern sky every three or four nights. The darkest skies above the arid Atacama Desert make Chile one of the best places worldwide for astronomical observation. "The number of alerts the telescope will send every night is equivalent to the inboxes of 83,000 people. It's impossible for someone to look at that one by one," said astrophysicist Francisco Foster. "We're going to have to use artificial intelligence tools."
