Latest news with #VeraCRubin
Times
4 days ago
- Science
- Times
Telescope reminds us of the debt we owe Vera Rubin
Vera C Rubin's work did much to demystify the heavens NSF-DOE VERA C RUBIN OBSERVATORY/AP T he American astronomer Vera C Rubin, who died in 2016, was certainly given enormous recognition and credit for her work in her lifetime. Her stellar career led to medals, prizes and awards all over the world. She did not, however, receive the Nobel prize for physics for her pioneering study of galaxy rotation rates in the 1960s and 1970s, work subsequently accepted as strong evidence for the existence of dark matter. Dark matter and dark energy are now thought to comprise 95 per cent of the mass-energy content of the universe. Rubin had to battle prejudice against women in science for many decades. If she did miss out on a Nobel because of her gender, she would not be alone. The shabby failure to fully credit Rosalind Franklin's contribution to the double helix breakthrough is well known. Lisa Meitner, 'the mother of the atomic bomb', was even more ruthlessly snubbed, while her partner in nuclear fission research, Otto Hahn, bagged a Nobel. The brilliance of Marietta Blau, Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Chien-Shiung Wu was also overlooked by Stockholm, while many of their male collaborators were laureated. In Rubin's own field, the great Edwin Hubble, whose work drew on that of Henrietta Swan Leavitt, acknowledged the huge debt he owed her. Just as Hubble gave his name to a revolutionary telescope, so too did Rubin, when the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in Chile was renamed the Vera C Rubin Observatory in her honour. The first images from this huge yet agile device were published this week, capturing 2,000 undetected asteroids within ten hours. Over the next decade, the southern night sky will be continuously mapped and supernova explosions from billions of years ago will be traced. If our solar system does have a mysterious Planet Nine, Rubin will find it. Perhaps somewhere in those heavens she did so much to demystify, Vera Rubin is having the last laugh.
Scoop
5 days ago
- Science
- Scoop
The First Test Images From The Brand New Vera C. Rubin Observatory Have Been Revealed To The Public
Press Release – Science Media Centre Inside the Vera C Rubin telescope is the largest camera ever built, University of Canterbury computational astrophysicist Dr John Forbes told Stuff. The telescope, located atop Cerro Pachón in central Chile, is focused on the Southern Hemisphere sky. After one year of operation it's expected to generate more optical astronomy data than that produced by all previous telescopes combined. The telescope is named after US astronomer Vera Rubin, who produced the first persuasive results supporting the theory of dark matter. A titan of a camera Inside the Vera C Rubin telescope is the largest camera ever built, University of Canterbury computational astrophysicist Dr John Forbes told Stuff. 'The telescope is looking for changes in the night sky,' he said, 'so when something changes – an object in the Solar System moves across the sky, or an interesting supernova explodes – alerts will go out and we'll be able to follow up on it.' Kiwi scientists to play key role The Universities of Canterbury and Auckland are both contributors to Rubin, UC planetary astronomer Dr Michele Bannister told the Science Media Centre. 'We are the first follow-up telescopes in the South after Chile,' Dr Bannister said. Answering questions, big and small The telescope can see objects about halfway to the edge of the universe, University of Auckland cosmologist Richard Easther told RNZ Morning Report. 'Over the next few years, Rubin hopes to find most of the tiny rocks in the solar system,' Professor Easther said. 'It also hopes to be able to figure out the speed at which the universe is expanding, which is a big challenge for us at the moment – to make sense of exactly how the universe is expanding and what's driving that.'
Scoop
5 days ago
- Science
- Scoop
The First Test Images From The Brand New Vera C. Rubin Observatory Have Been Revealed To The Public
The telescope, located atop Cerro Pachón in central Chile, is focused on the Southern Hemisphere sky. After one year of operation it's expected to generate more optical astronomy data than that produced by all previous telescopes combined. The telescope is named after US astronomer Vera Rubin, who produced the first persuasive results supporting the theory of dark matter. A titan of a camera Inside the Vera C Rubin telescope is the largest camera ever built, University of Canterbury computational astrophysicist Dr John Forbes told Stuff. 'The telescope is looking for changes in the night sky,' he said, 'so when something changes – an object in the Solar System moves across the sky, or an interesting supernova explodes – alerts will go out and we'll be able to follow up on it.' The Universities of Canterbury and Auckland are both contributors to Rubin, UC planetary astronomer Dr Michele Bannister told the Science Media Centre. 'We are the first follow-up telescopes in the South after Chile,' Dr Bannister said. Answering questions, big and small The telescope can see objects about halfway to the edge of the universe, University of Auckland cosmologist Richard Easther told RNZ Morning Report. 'Over the next few years, Rubin hopes to find most of the tiny rocks in the solar system,' Professor Easther said. 'It also hopes to be able to figure out the speed at which the universe is expanding, which is a big challenge for us at the moment – to make sense of exactly how the universe is expanding and what's driving that.'
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Science
- Washington Post
Astronomer Vera Rubin was captivated by the stars as a child in D.C.
The young mother stood before an imposing panel of scientists, nervous about leaving her newborn for the first time but determined to present her thesis about the astronomical center of creation. 'Then one by one many angry sounding men got up to tell me why I could not do 'that',' Vera C. Rubin wrote about the way she was treated by the American Astronomical Society at its December 1950 meeting.
RNZ News
6 days ago
- Science
- RNZ News
First images from world's biggest camera released
science space 17 minutes ago The first images are out from the biggest camera in the world pointing into the universe. The "Vera C. Rubin" Observatory is in Chile, more than 2,500 metres above sea level. Auckland University professor Richard Easther spoke to Melissa Chan-Green.
