The Vera Rubin Observatory has officially seen the first light. Astronomers have published the results of its test observations. The images show cosmic phenomena captured on an unprecedented scale. In just 10 hours, the observatory observed millions of galaxies and stars in the Milky Way, as well as thousands of asteroids.
Telescope with the largest field of view in history
The Vera Rubin Observatory is located in Chile. It is an 8.4-meter wide-angle survey telescope with the largest field of view of any existing astronomical instrument. It is designed to capture images of large areas of the sky in a single shot.
The key tasks of the new observatory include:
- measuring weak gravitational lensing in order to detect signs of dark energy and dark matter;
- searching for and studying small bodies in the Solar System;
- mapping the Milky Way;
- detection of short-lived optical events, such as new stars and supernovae.
Millions of distant galaxies
Vera Rubin’s test images give a good idea of its enormous capabilities. The first one shows the Virgo Cluster, located 55 million light-years from Earth. It covers about 10 million galaxies. In turn, these 10 million galaxies make up only 0.05% of the approximately 20 billion galaxies that the observatory will observe during its first 10 years of operation.
To obtain the image, astronomers combined 1,185 individual exposures taken over seven nights. Each of them covered an area of the sky measuring 10 square degrees (about 45 full moons). The final version has an area of 45 square degrees. Combining several exposures of the same location in the sky, taken at different times and using different color filters, made it possible to see extremely faint details that would not have been captured in a single exposure.
Stellar maternity hospitals
The second photo shows the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula. Its full resolution is 5 gigapixels, and it is composed of 678 exposures taken over 7.2 hours of observation. In total, the image contains approximately two trillion pixels of data. No other observatory is capable of creating an image of such a vast area so quickly and in such depth.
The Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula are star-forming regions located 5,000 and 4,000 light-years from Earth, respectively. Vera Rubin’s image shows a complex network of dust bands and star clusters, where new stars are being born at this very moment.
Thousands of new asteroids
Scientists have also published a video demonstrating the observatory’s capabilities for tracking small objects in our Solar System. It consists of 1,185 frames taken over the course of seven nights. According to astronomers’ calculations, Vera Rubin’s field of view captured 2,104 previously unknown asteroids, including seven near-Earth objects, 11 Trojan asteroids of Jupiter, and nine trans-Neptunian objects. If we add to this the 1,800 previously known objects not included in the video, the observatory has tracked a total of over 4,000 small bodies.
And again, this is only a small fraction of its capabilities. Astronomers expect that within the first year or two of operation, the Vera Rubin Observatory will discover millions of new asteroids. For comparison, astronomers have currently identified 1.45 million small bodies. With Vera Rubin’s help, we will learn more about the formation of our Solar System and will be able to determine faster than ever before whether an asteroid poses a threat to Earth. The telescope will also be an ideal instrument for detecting interstellar visitors — objects originating from beyond our Solar System, such as the asteroid Oumuamua or the comet Borisov.
According to Rubinobservatory.org
