World’s largest digital digicam begins observing the cosmos

Ever imagined seeing a golf ball on the floor of the moon in a picture taken from the earth? That is now doable with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO), the world’s newest astronomy facility, positioned on one of many peaks of mountain Cerro Pachòn in northern Chile. Collectively funded by the U.S. Nationwide Science Basis and the Division of Power, this 8.4-metre telescope affords an unprecedented view of the universe.

The three,200-megapixel (MP) digicam put in on the VRO has 67-times extra pixels than an iPhone 16 Professional digicam. The big mirrors and distinctive design permit the telescope to seize wide-angle 3.5-degree-diameter photographs, equal to the dimensions of seven full moons within the sky.

These distinctive options will permit the VRO to scan all the southern hemisphere sky each three nights, which it’s going to do repeatedly for 10 years. This ultra-high definition, huge angle survey of the sky will thus create the longest astronomical time-lapse film of all time, permitting for a lot of new discoveries within the photo voltaic neighbourhood and deep house alike.

Ten million alerts

Whereas the long run holds limitless potentialities for this subsequent technology observing facility, the VRO was constructed to serve 4 main science targets. Certainly one of them is knowing the character of darkish matter, the mysterious substance that makes up 80% of all matter within the universe.

However whereas darkish matter can’t be seen, it causes galaxies to clump collectively in particular methods. Astronomers will research the distribution of galaxies close to and much to be able to perceive the properties of darkish matter, and determine what it’s made from.

For the reason that VRO will scan all the southern hemisphere sky time and again, scientists may also get a reasonably good thought of how the sky appears to be like usually. It will permit them to choose up any modifications within the sky relative to photographs taken a number of days in the past, a number of weeks in the past, and, ultimately, a number of years in the past.

In truth its state-of-the-art expertise permits the VRO to check every picture to the ‘common’ picture of that a part of the sky inside 60 seconds and concern an alert if any modifications are detected. When absolutely operational, the VRO will generate round 10 million alerts from 20 TB of uncooked information collected each evening. That’s equal to greater than three years of streaming movies.

The altering sky

Whereas a lot of the modifications within the sky are resulting from fast-moving objects resembling comets, there exist different celestial entities whose place and brightness can change over time. For example, whereas 1.5 million asteroids — rocky our bodies orbiting the solar between Mars and Jupiter — have been found, solely 30% of these smaller than 140 m are recognized up to now. The VRO is predicted to extend this determine to 90% and permit scientists to find ‘killer asteroids’, which regardless of their comparatively small measurement might devastate our planet in the event that they strike it.

With its unprecedented decision, the VRO can increase the rely of recognized photo voltaic system objects by 10x, discovering many new comets and asteroids, dwarf planets like Pluto, and even a ninth planet if it exists.

All galaxies work together with their neighbours gravitationally. Small satellites are torn aside by the gravity of larger galaxies as they merge with them. The VRO will map the distribution of stars within the Milky Means, serving to astronomers determine ‘streams’ of stars that after belonged to smaller galaxies that blended with the Milky Means tens of millions of years in the past.

Given its distinctive long-term survey functionality, the VRO may also uncover tens of millions of objects of variable brightness. For example, dying stars explode as supernovae, which brighten up for a number of days earlier than their nuclear furnace is extinguished. Some stars could have planets, or one other star orbiting them, blocking their mild from reaching us sometimes. Different variable stars could change in brightness as a result of their outer surfaces pulse over a number of hours to a couple days.

The primary photographs

In a June 23 press convention, the observatory revealed that the $473 million facility had already found 2,104 asteroids in every week of observations. All different efforts mixed at present discover round 20,000 asteroids a yr.

Whereas one of many preliminary photographs shows swirling clouds of mud and gasoline within the Trifid and Lagoon nebulae 9,000 lightyears from the earth, one other reveals a piece of the Virgo galaxy cluster positioned 54 million lightyears away.

The large photographs captured by the VRO are a journey by way of house and time: Milky Means stars shining in an array of colors from blue to purple within the foreground, teams of galaxies with reddish hues transferring away from us in distant house, and a collection of gravitationally interacting galaxies in a close-by cluster sandwiched in between.

The VRO is distinguished from its predecessors, together with the James Webb House Telescope: whereas they’re extra delicate, they’ll solely observe a small patch of the sky at a time.

Vera Rubin’s legacy

The VRO was initially proposed in 2001 and was then referred to as the ‘Massive Synoptic Survey Telescope’ (LSST). It was renamed because the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in 2019.

Rubin (1928-2016) was an American astronomer. She was the primary to point out that spiral galaxies rotated so quick that if their constituents had been simply stars, they need to fly aside. The implication was that there are giant quantities of unseen matter holding galaxies collectively, the substance we name darkish matter at the moment.

Regardless of her pioneering work, gender bias denied Rubin a Nobel Prize. Now, the VRO honours her and her colleagues by observing billions of galaxies as a part of the ‘Legacy Survey of House and Time’, which can assist astronomers perceive the character of darkish matter, whose existence first got here to mild in Rubin’s work.

Smriti Mahajan is an astronomer and science communicator selling STEM training by way of astronomy. theastronomyclass@gmail.com

Printed – July 04, 2025 12:00 pm IST