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#Post#: 330839--------------------------------------------------
First images from Vera Rubin Observatory
By: kkt Date: June 23, 2025, 9:40 am
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory's first images are stunning — and
just the start
JUNE 23, 2025, 12:01 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
Nell Greenfieldboyce
A powerful new observatory has unveiled its first images to the
public, showing off what it can do as it gets ready to start its
main mission: making a vivid time-lapse video of the night sky
that will let astronomers study all the cosmic events that occur
over ten years.
"As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But a
snapshot doesn't tell the whole story. And what astronomy has
given us mostly so far are just snapshots," says Yusra AlSayyad,
a Princeton University researcher who oversees image processing
for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
"The sky and the world aren't static," she points out. "There's
asteroids zipping by, supernovae exploding."
And the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, conceived nearly 30 years
ago, is designed to capture all of it.
"These images are fantastic. They're incredibly high resolution.
But they're just a tiny, tiny fraction of what's been captured,"
says Kevin Reil, a staff scientist with SLAC National
Accelerator Lab who is working at the observatory in Chile. He
notes that the newly released image that shows many galaxies is
small section of the observatory's total view of the Virgo
cluster. "We just happened to zoom in on this little piece."
Built with funding from the National Science Foundation and the
Department of Energy, the facility will collect a mind-boggling
amount of data on the entire southern night sky during a
decade-long survey slated to start later this year.
This survey will compile observations on about 40 billion stars,
galaxies and other celestial objects. Each one will be checked
out hundreds of times, giving astronomers access to about 60
petabytes of raw data, which the Rubin Observatory says is "more
data than everything that's ever been written in any language in
human history."
"Since we take images of the night sky so quickly and so often,
we'll detect millions of changing objects literally every
night," says Aaron Roodman of Stanford's SLAC National
Accelerator Laboratory, who is part of the observatory's
leadership team.
He calls the Rubin Observatory a "discovery machine" that will
enable astronomers to "explore galaxies, stars in the Milky Way,
objects in the solar system, and all in a truly new way."
Already, in just over 10 hours of test observations, the
observatory has discovered 2,104 never-before-seen-asteroids,
including seven near-Earth asteroids, none of which pose any
danger.
Mining the data
Named after an astronomer famous for her research related to
dark matter, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is perched on a
mountaintop in Chile. It's equipped with a specially-designed
large telescope, as well as a car-sized digital camera that's
the biggest such camera in the world.
The camera is controlled by an automated system that moves and
points the telescope, snapping pictures again and again, to
cover the entire sky every few days. Each image is so detailed,
displaying it would take 400 ultra high-definition television
screens.
By constantly comparing new images to ones taken before, the
facility's computer systems will be able to spot anything in the
sky that changes or moves or goes boom.
"It will be capable of really detecting things that actually
change very rapidly," says Sandrine Thomas, deputy director of
Rubin Observatory and the observatory's telescope and site
project scientist. "That, in itself, will be unique to the
world. No other telescope would be able to do that."
"It has such a wide field of view and such a rapid cadence that
we do have that movie-like aspect to the night sky," she says.
Story with images continues, link:
HTML https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5355034/vera-c-rubin-observatory-first-images
#Post#: 330935--------------------------------------------------
Re: First images from Vera Rubin Observatory
By: pamelaaos Date: June 23, 2025, 5:38 pm
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So cool. Thanks!
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