Perched atop the Cerro Pachón upland successful Chile, 8,684 feet precocious successful nan Atacama Desert, wherever nan barren aerial creates immoderate of nan champion conditions successful nan world to position nan nighttime sky, a caller scope dissimilar thing built earlier has begun its study of nan cosmos. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named for nan astronomer who discovered grounds of acheronian matter successful 1978, is expected to uncover immoderate 20 cardinal galaxies, 17 cardinal stars successful nan Milky Way, 10 cardinal supernovas, and millions of smaller objects wrong nan star system.
“We’re perfectly guaranteed to find thing that blows people’s minds,” says Anthony Tyson, main intelligence of nan Rubin Observatory. “Something that we cannot show you, because we don’t cognize it. Something unusual.”
This tremendous astronomical haul will travel from nan observatory’s 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is slated to statesman later this year. The first subject images from nan scope were released to nan nationalist today.
Rubin’s unprecedented study of nan nighttime entity promises to toggle shape our knowing of nan cosmos. What happened during nan early stages of satellite statement successful nan star system? What types of exotic, high-energy explosions hap successful nan universe? And really does nan esoteric unit that scientists telephone dark energy really work?
“Usually you would creation a scope aliases a task to spell and reply 1 of these questions,” says Mario Juric, nan information guidance task intelligence for Rubin. “What makes Rubin truthful powerful is that we tin build 1 instrumentality that supplies information to nan full organization to lick each of these questions astatine once.”
The scope will create a decade-long, high-resolution movie of nan universe. It will make astir 20 terabytes of information per day, nan balanced of 3 years streaming Netflix, piling up immoderate 60,000 terabytes by nan extremity of its survey. In its first twelvemonth alone, Rubin will compile much information than each erstwhile optical observatories combined.
“You person to person an almost afloat automated package suite down it, because nary quality tin process aliases moreover look astatine these images,” Juric says. “The immense mostly of pixels that Rubin is going to cod from nan entity will ne'er ever beryllium seen by quality eyes, truthful we person to build package eyes to spell done each these images and place … nan astir different objects.”
Those different objects—asteroids from different star systems, supermassive achromatic holes devouring stars, high-energy blasts pinch nary known source—contain secrets astir nan workings of nan cosmos.
“You build a scope for illustration this, and it’s nan balanced of building 4 aliases 5 telescopes for circumstantial areas,” Juric says. “But you tin do it each astatine once.”
The observatory connected nan acme of Cerro Pachón successful Chile.NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/A. Pizarro D.
A Telescope Like No Other
Housed successful a 10-story building, nan Rubin Observatory is equipped pinch an 8.4-meter superior reflector and a 3,200-megapixel integer camera, nan largest ever built. The scope rotates connected a specialized mount, taking 30-second exposures of nan entity earlier quickly pivoting to a caller position. Rubin will return astir 1,000 images each night, photographing nan full Southern Hemisphere entity successful bonzer item each 3 to 4 days.
“It’s an astonishing portion of engineering,” says Sandrine Thomas, a task intelligence who useful connected nan optical instruments of nan Rubin Observatory.