Millions of iridescent stars, distant external galaxies and swarms of winding asteroids are just a few of the cosmic phenomena made in the first images made by the world’s largest digital camera. The Vera Rubin Observatory, a astronomy facility funded by the United States in Central Chile, shared its inaugural findings with the public during an event in Washington, DC, yesterday 23 June, which is expected to be a transforming breakthrough in astronomical research.
Named after the groundbreaking American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who first indulgent Convincing evidence of dark matter, the observatory is jointly funded by the US National Science Foundation and the Office of Science of the Energy Department and is the result of more than two decades of work. Equipped with a digital camera with a weight of approximately 6,200 pounds (~ 2,812 kg) and a telescope that measure more than 27 feet (~ 8.4 meters) are the facilities on top of Cerro Pachón in the Andes Mountains-a area that is known for its dry climate and a lack of slight pollution.
Later this year the Rubin will start his first major project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), in which it will take about a thousand ultra-wide, high-definition photos of the air every evening for the following decade to put together a “time-lapse record” of our ever-changing universe. Every three to four nights, the scans cover the entire visible southern hemisphere.
“Making the world’s largest digital camera will let scientists explore the cosmos in new ways, and on a scale that makes discoveries possible that should fundamentally change our understanding of the universe,” said director of the LSST camera Aaron Roodman in a statement.
The first images of the LSST camera have already surprised researchers.
In about 10 hours of observation, the camera discovered a strip of 2.104 never before asteroids, seven of which are in the vicinity of the earth (but fortunately no danger). For comparison, all other observatories on the ground and combined in space discover around 20,000 asteroids every year.
The observatory has also released a composite photo of the trifid nevel and the lagoon nebula (massive clouds gas and dust where stars are formed), both located several thousand light years away from the earth in the galaxy system. The photo, which was taken for more than seven hours, consists of 678 separate images.
In addition to the first glimpse photos, the Rubin also launched one Online Interactive Platform This enables the public to enter part of the findings of the observatory and to explore the universe itself. The Skyviewer app, developed by a team of astronomers, educators and web designers, has a Sonification -Tool This enables individuals to explore the cosmos through sound.
In a statement, the president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Matt Mountain, said the field on the ‘edge of transformation’.
“It is not every day that a revolution stares you in the face, but that is exactly what the Rubin Observatory team – together with our colleagues at the NSF and do – has supplied with these first images,” Mountain said.
