Vera C. Rubin Observatory: First images prove great efficiency

The people responsible for the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory have taken the first spectacular images of the night sky after months of tests and calibrations and have now published them. The images show, among other things, the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula in the Milky Way and a gigantic image with a total of around 10 million individual galaxies. In addition, the ultra-modern instrument has discovered more than 2100 new asteroids and numerous celestial bodies that change their brightness in the first few days of its research operation alone.

The first research images from the new observatory thus already point to the particular strengths of the instrument. From its particularly favorable location, the telescope can image large areas of the night sky at high speed with unprecedented resolution and thus make changes visible over time. This should not only help in the observation of short-lived phenomena such as stellar explosions and the search for asteroids, but also advance research into dark matter and dark energy, as well as enabling more precise mapping of the Milky Way.

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A triumph for the USA

The Ruby Observatory is a joint project of the National Science Foundation and the US Department of Energy. Michael Kratsios, who is responsible for science and technology in the White House, also spoke at the presentation of the first images. He called the instrument a "triumph of the capabilities and ingenuity" of the United States. After the new US administration has so far attracted attention primarily with massive austerity programs, including in the area of science funding, he described the observatory as an investment in the future that will inspire American children and is part of a long tradition of US research projects.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is located in Chile and received its centerpiece this spring when the world's largest digital camera was attached to the telescope. It is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and has a sensor array consisting of 201 individual CCD sensors, each with 16 megapixels. In its observatory, the gigantic digital camera will benefit from a mirror with a diameter of 8.4 meters and a particularly large field of view. This will enable it to photograph the entire night sky every three to four nights and create the largest time-lapse of the starry sky ever within ten years.

Fundamental discoveries are also expected from the new observatory in Germany. Esra Bulbul from the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics sees it as part of a transformation of astronomy in this decade. This is also due to the enormous amount of data that the telescope delivers. Every night, 20 terabytes can be processed by the infrastructure installed there. "The amount of data and its ever-increasing precision and quality will probably allow us to discover completely new physics", says the astronomer. The research focuses of the instrument coincide with those of several Max Planck Institutes, according to those responsible.

Pioneering namesake

The new observatory is named after the astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who revolutionized our understanding of galaxies and made a decisive contribution to the description of so-called dark matter. She is one of the most important female researchers of the past century, explains the Max Planck Society. She was also a staunch advocate for equal opportunities for women in science. The astronomer, who died in 2019, received a number of prestigious awards, but was denied the Nobel Prize. Now her name lives on in one of the most important research instruments of all.

(mho)