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Vera Rubin Observatory Releases First Deep-Space Images

  • Writer: By The Financial District
    By The Financial District
  • Jun 29
  • 2 min read

Perched high in the foothills of Chile’s Andes mountains, a revolutionary new space telescope has captured its first images of the cosmos—and they’re spectacular.


Every three nights for the next 10 years, the Rubin Observatory will produce an ultra-high-definition map of the entire visible southern sky. I Photo: Rubin Observatory Facebook



Astronomers are abuzz over the initial test images released today by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which showcase the universe in unprecedented detail, from violent cosmic collisions to distant nebulas, Paola Rosa-Aquino reported for National Geographic.




“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,” said Christian Aganze, a galactic archaeologist 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.”



At the heart of the observatory is the Simonyi Survey Telescope, connected to the world’s largest and highest-resolution digital camera.


Rubin’s 27-foot primary mirror, paired with a 3,200-megapixel camera, will take 30-second exposure images of vast sections of the sky with unmatched speed and detail.



Each image will cover an area as large as 40 full moons. Every three nights for the next 10 years, the Rubin Observatory will produce an ultra-high-definition map of the entire visible southern sky.


With this level of coverage, scientists hope to create a dynamic, time-lapse "movie" of the universe.



“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 see incredibly dim galaxies and stars, including galaxies billions of light-years away,” said Aaron Roodman, program lead for the LSST Camera at Rubin Observatory and Deputy Director of 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, and objects in the solar system—all in a truly new way.”








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