After decades of preparation, Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first image to the world on Monday (June 23rd) in a live stream. Photos taken by the world’s largest digital camera are very modest and show a relatively large area of the sky.
At a TV press conference, observatory scientists revealed new details about images that far exceeded the “sneak peak” images released earlier in the day. In fact, the adoring images of the Spiral Galaxy shared before Monday’s press conference show only about 2% of the space catalogued in Rubin’s first photo of the night sky, project scientists revealed.
The complete image includes 10 million galaxies of Burgo clusters, many of which are not previously seen. Zeljko Ivezic, a project scientist at Rubin and deputy director of the station’s large-scale synoptic research telescope (LSST) construction project, said during the live stream.
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Please take a look
The complete image is a whopping 3200 megapixels and needs to be displayed on a 400 ultra-high resolution television screen to solve that. A monitor enough to cover the entire basketball court – Ivezic explained.
All First-look images can be found on the Observatory website, including a searchable and zoomable version of the full 3200 megapixel image.
“Amazing amounts of data”
In the first year of the observatory’s operation, according to the observatory’s statement, all other existing optical observers collect more data than combined.
This data will be freely available to scientists in the hopes of leading to important new discoveries about the universe, including insights into previously invisible asteroid locations, dark matter and dark energy properties.
Related: Vera C. Rubin Observatory: A groundbreaking mission to make a time-lapse film for the decade of the universe
“We believe that the stunning images and incredible amounts of data produced by the station will support extraordinary scientific efforts around the world,” said Michael Kratzos, director of White House Science and Technology Policy at the conference.
According to the statement, Rubin generates approximately 20 terabytes of data per night by photographing approximately 20 terabytes of data per night at 30-second intervals during planned decade of operation. By the end of the run, the observation deck will capture an estimated 40 billion celestial objects and obtain trillions of measurements.
The Rubin team hopes that this data will promote understanding of mystical space phenomena. “From today, our ability to understand dark matter, dark energy and planetary defense will grow faster than ever,” said Brian Stone, the Chiefs of Staff of the National Science Foundation, which operates the observatory along with the U.S. Department of Energy.
Night sky movie
When fully operational later this year, Rubin will continuously take photos of the night sky to capture every movement of visible celestial bodies. Collects about 1,000 images per night, covering the southern sky every 3-4 nights. These images are sewn together to create a highly detailed time-lapse movie of the universe.
The time lapse said it reveals the nightly movement of asteroids, comets, stars, supernovaes, galaxies and perhaps other unknown space phenomena.
For example, in the first few nights of observations, Rubin Observatory located more than 2,000 previously unknown asteroids traveling through our solar system. By the end of its mission, the observatory is expected to discover around 5 million new asteroids. This will discover about five times the number of all known asteroids discovered over the past 200 years, researchers said at the meeting.
“We’re going to see the film begin, the cameras are running and our cosmos unfold before us,” said Chris Wright, secretary at the Department of Energy.
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