{"id":15642,"date":"2025-06-23T14:05:51","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T14:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15642"},"modified":"2025-06-23T14:05:51","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T14:05:51","slug":"the-largest-camera-ever-built-releases-its-first-images-of-the-cosmos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/topat10.com\/?p=15642","title":{"rendered":"The Largest Camera Ever Built Releases Its First Images of the Cosmos"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Perched atop the<\/span> Cerro Pach\u00f3n mountain in Chile, 8,684 feet high in the Atacama Desert, where the dry air creates some of the best conditions in the world to view the night sky, a new telescope unlike anything built before has begun its survey of the cosmos. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named for the astronomer who discovered evidence of dark matter in 1978<\/a>, is expected to reveal some 20 billion galaxies, 17 billion stars in the Milky Way, 10 million supernovas, and millions of smaller objects within the solar system.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re absolutely guaranteed to find something that blows people\u2019s minds,\u201d says Anthony Tyson, chief scientist of the Rubin Observatory. \u201cSomething that we cannot tell you, because we don\u2019t know it. Something unusual.\u201d<\/p>\n

This tremendous astronomical haul will come from the observatory\u2019s 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time<\/a>, which is slated to begin later this year. The first science images from the telescope were released to the public today.<\/p>\n

Rubin\u2019s unprecedented survey of the night sky promises to transform our understanding of the cosmos. What happened during the early stages of planet formation in the solar system? What types of exotic, high-energy explosions occur in the universe? And how does the esoteric force that scientists call dark energy<\/a> actually work?<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually you would design a telescope or a project to go and answer one of these questions,\u201d says Mario Juric, the data management project scientist for Rubin. \u201cWhat makes Rubin so powerful is that we can build one machine that supplies data to the entire community to solve all of these questions at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

The telescope will create a decade-long, high-resolution movie of the universe. It will generate about 20 terabytes of data per day, the equivalent of three years streaming Netflix, piling up some 60,000 terabytes by the end of its survey. In its first year alone, Rubin will compile more data than all previous optical observatories combined.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to have an almost fully automated software suite behind it, because no human can process or even look at these images,\u201d Juric says. \u201cThe vast majority of pixels that Rubin is going to collect from the sky will never ever be seen by human eyes, so we have to build software eyes to go through all these images and identify \u2026 the most unusual objects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those unusual objects\u2014asteroids<\/a> from other solar systems, supermassive black holes<\/a> devouring stars, high-energy blasts with no known source\u2014contain secrets about the workings of the cosmos.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou build a telescope like this, and it\u2019s the equivalent of building four or five telescopes for specific areas,\u201d Juric says. \u201cBut you can do it all at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

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