Vera Rubin telescope releases first images

Cosmos has published below some of the first images released by the Rubin Observatory.

Astronomy experts and enthusiasts around the world are watching on with glee as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory today releases its first images of space, heralding new discoveries about the universe.

The giant telescope sits atop the Cerro Pachón peak in the Chilean Andes mountains, 2,647 metres above sea level. There it will watch the skies for 10 years to create a timelapse video of deep space.

Observatory beneath star trails
Vera C. Rubin Observatory beneath star trails. Credit: Hernan Stockebrand

It will provide an unprecedented view of the entire southern hemisphere’s sky every 3 days.

Rubin’s claim to fame is its imaging apparatus which includes the world’s most powerful digital camera – a 3.2-billion-pixel camera called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST weighs 3 tonnes and includes an 8m-wide mirror and 3 lenses. For comparison, the latest iPhone has a 48-million-pixel camera.

Stellar nursery image
The Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — stellar nurseries within our Milky Way — are seen in unprecedented detail.

The observatory is named after pioneering American astronomer Vera Florence Cooper Rubin whose work on galaxy rotation provided the first direct evidence for the existence of dark matter.

Now, the Rubin observatory will help answer some of the deepest questions of the cosmos including the nature of dark matter, dark energy and the evolution of galaxies.

Thousands of astronomers around the world will use data from Rubin to help their research.

It’s expected that the observatory will provide about 10 million alerts every day, pointing to objects which have either changed position or brightness. Some of these alerts could reveal new phenomena.

“In reality, there is so much we still don’t know about the universe, so the scope of what may be discovered is what’s really exciting,” says University of Melbourne professor Rachel Webster who leads the Australian collaboration with the Rubin observatory.

“Almost 30 years after the idea was first conceived, and after a decade of construction, the telescope represents a truly exciting leap forward in astrophysics.”

“The Vera C. Rubin telescope will be undertaking a survey which means that it is looking at the whole (southern) sky,” Webster tells Cosmos. “This is important as typically we just look at things we already know about.  In this case we will be agnostic and expect to see some unexpected new things. Two sorts of new objects I am expecting are (1) very faint diffuse objects which have been too faint to see with smaller telescopes, and (2) sources that ‘go bang in the night’, i.e. things that explode or change brightness rapidly.”

Distant galaxies, many stars
This image shows a small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Rubin will take advantage not only of a car-sized telescope, but new tools and innovations such as AI. Australian-based software engineers have developed the code for the Rubin observatory.

“An international partnership has been integral to access astronomical datasets of this quality,” Webster says. “Astronomy is an area where Australia really punches above its weight, so an investment in this world-leading capability provides an exciting opportunity for our young scientists to explore the newest boundaries of the universe.

“The data from Rubin Observatory will literally shed light on the billions of new radio sources to be revealed by the SKA telescope currently under construction in Western Australia and in South Africa.”

“We will learn a lot more about both dark matter and dark energy through a range of proposed experiments,” Webster adds. “In addition, a project I am very interested in is understanding how supermassive black holes interact with the material around them, so that we can see them.  We do have models for this, but we know they are incomplete.  The black holes not only turn matter into radiation through the famous E=Mc^2 equation, but they also eject massive winds which interact with the other matter in their host galaxies.”

Enthusiasts can watch the livestreamed release of the Rubin observatory’s first images, which began at 1am AEST (11am ET), here. See high resolution images here. Get involved in citizen science projects through the Rubin observatory at this link.

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