Perched atop the Cerro Pachón mountain in Chile, 8,684 ft excessive within the Atacama Desert, the place the dry air creates among the greatest circumstances on this planet to view the evening sky, a brand new telescope not like something constructed earlier than has begun its survey of the cosmos. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named for the astronomer who discovered evidence of dark matter in 1978, is predicted to disclose some 20 billion galaxies, 17 billion stars within the Milky Approach, 10 million supernovas, and tens of millions of smaller objects inside the photo voltaic system.
“We’re completely assured to search out one thing that blows folks’s minds,” says Anthony Tyson, chief scientist of the Rubin Observatory. “One thing that we can not inform you, as a result of we don’t comprehend it. One thing uncommon.”
This great astronomical haul will come from the observatory’s 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, which is slated to start later this yr. The primary science pictures from the telescope have been launched to the general public at the moment.
Rubin’s unprecedented survey of the evening sky guarantees to remodel our understanding of the cosmos. What occurred throughout the early levels of planet formation within the photo voltaic system? What forms of unique, high-energy explosions happen within the universe? And the way does the esoteric drive that scientists name dark energy really work?
“Often you’d design a telescope or a undertaking to go and reply one among these questions,” says Mario Juric, a member of the Rubin undertaking science group and professor on the College of Washington. “What makes Rubin so highly effective is that we are able to construct one machine that provides knowledge to the whole neighborhood to unravel all of those questions without delay.”
The telescope will create a decade-long, high-resolution film of the universe. It is going to generate about 20 terabytes of knowledge per day, the equal of three years streaming Netflix, piling up some 60,000 terabytes by the top of its survey. In its first yr alone, Rubin will compile extra knowledge than all earlier optical observatories mixed.
“It’s a must to have an nearly totally automated software program suite behind it, as a result of no human can course of and even have a look at these pictures,” Juric says. “The overwhelming majority of pixels that Rubin goes to gather from the sky won’t ever ever be seen by human eyes, so now we have to construct software program eyes to undergo all these pictures and establish … essentially the most uncommon objects.”
These uncommon objects—asteroids from different photo voltaic programs, supermassive black holes devouring stars, high-energy blasts with no identified supply—comprise secrets and techniques in regards to the workings of the cosmos.
“You construct a telescope like this, and it’s the equal of constructing 4 or 5 telescopes for particular areas,” Juric says. “However you are able to do it all of sudden.”
The observatory on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile.NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory/A. Pizarro D.
A Telescope Like No Different
Housed in a 10-story constructing, the Rubin Observatory is provided with an 8.4-meter major mirror and a 3,200-megapixel digital digital camera, the most important ever constructed. The telescope rotates on a specialised mount, taking 30-second exposures of the sky earlier than rapidly pivoting to a brand new place. Rubin will take about 1,000 pictures each evening, photographing the whole Southern Hemisphere sky in extraordinary element each three to 4 days.
“It’s a tremendous piece of engineering,” says Sandrine Thomas, a undertaking scientist who works on the optical devices of the Rubin Observatory.
