The new Vera Rubin Observatory telescope will double the amount of data collected so far by every other instrument in the history of optical astronomy combined…IN ITS FIRST YEAR OF OPERATION.
The observatory is located on Cerro Pachón, 2,500 meters high on the foothills of the Andes in northern Chile. The new telescope has been under construction for ten years, and its inauguration marked the beginning of a ten-year project called “The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which will take ultra-high-resolution pictures of the entire night sky of the southern hemisphere every three or four days. It recorded its first view of the cosmos on April 15, 2025 at 8:00pm local time.
Astronomical observations up until now have focused on taking detailed snapshots of tiny points in the night sky. The Cerro Pachón telescope will enable scientists to study a decade-long time-lapse of the night sky, which will show dynamic features of the universe for the first time.
The LSST consists of a 1.7 meter long, 3,200-megapixel camera, which is the largest digital camera ever built. The system will have an enormous field of view, equivalent to an area of the sky covered by 45 or our Moons. The camera will be fed starlight reflected off a primary mirror that is 8.4 meters wide, and which took scientists at the University of Arizona seven years to grind into its unique shape. Over the course of a decade, each point in the sky will be photographed around 800 times.
In a new image released a week or so ago, astronomers identified more than 2,000 asteroids in our solar system that had never been seen before. In comparison, around 20,000 asteroids are identified each year by all the other telescopes in the world.
Rubin, the short name for the new telescope, will also provide the most detailed census of 70% of the asteroids that could possibly pose a threat to the Earth; that is asteroids bigger than 140 meters wide. It will also find out if the legendary, often predicted, ninth planet of the solar system, which is rumored to exist in the clouds of rocks, somewhere far beyond Neptune, actually exists. The possibilities of completely new discoveries, and the sheer numbers of observations involved, mean that Rubin represents a huge, almost unbelievable, advance in our knowledge of astronomy.
To manage Rubin’s gargantuan amounts of data, scientists have built a bespoke intercontinental network of computers. Less than 10 seconds after the LSST’s camera shutters close every day, dedicated optical fibres will transfer everything to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California (backups will go to data centers in the Britain and France). At SLAC, algorithms will clean up the images and look for objects that have, say, appeared for the first time, or significantly changed position, or brightness since the previous night. These changes – and there will probably be millions per night – will be winnowed down into a priority list which other astronomers, and members of the public, can followup with more detailed direct observations of their own. All this will happen autonomously. “There’s absolutely no way any human being could go through these alerts by eye”, says Dr. Leanne Guy, a leading physicist at Rubin. “There is no way”.
One of the primary functions of Rubin, which was the original impetus for its design and construction, was the quest for knowledge about “dark matter” and “dark energy”. Dark energy makes up about 68% of the mass of the universe, and dark matter makes up about 27% more. We know virtually nothing about these phenomena. “What I’m most excited about seeing from Rubin in the long term,” says Dr. Guy, “are the things we’ve never even thought about.”
I have to admit that the sheer scale of new knowledge that the new Vera Rubin Observatory will uncover is mind-blowing, let alone the amazing discoveries that that knowledge will bring. Exciting is complete understatement. Even though I have minimal understanding of what this means, it is a development well-worthy of many blogs to come.
