The telescope’s journey started within the early 1600s when Dutch spectacle maker Jan Lippershey found that combining lenses may enlarge distant objects. Galileo Galilei shortly improved the designs and have become the primary to discover the heavens, revealing the Moon’s craters, Jupiter’s moons and the rings of Saturn. Over the centuries, telescopes developed from easy lens mixtures to large ground-based observatories with huge mirrors, and finally to space-based devices just like the Hubble Area Telescope that eradicated Earth’s atmospheric interference. As we speak’s cutting-edge telescopes, such because the James Webb Area Telescope, use superior know-how to look deeper into house than ever earlier than.
The Hubble Area Telescope as seen from the departing Area Shuttle Atlantis, flying STS-125, HST Servicing Mission 4. (Credit score : NASA)
Among the many astronomers who used these highly effective devices to revolutionize our view of the universe was Vera Rubin, whose groundbreaking observations within the Seventies would shake the very foundations of physics. Working with more and more refined telescopes, Rubin studied the rotation of spiral galaxies, anticipating to verify what appeared like fundamental physics: that stars farther from the middle of a galaxy ought to orbit extra slowly, simply as outer planets in our Photo voltaic System transfer extra leisurely than inside ones. As an alternative, her exact measurements revealed one thing totally surprising: stars on the edges of galaxies have been transferring far too quick, as if held in place by invisible matter that astronomers could not see. This discovery of what we now name darkish matter did not simply add a brand new chapter to astronomy, it revealed that the overwhelming majority of the universe consists of a mysterious, unseen substance that continues to puzzle us right now.
Darkish matter map for a patch of sky primarily based on gravitational lensing evaluation of a Kilo-Diploma Survey (Credit score : Kilo-Diploma Survey Collaboration)
Now, a new-generation telescope bearing Rubin’s title is poised to proceed her revolutionary work. Enter the Vera C. Rubin Observatory that has been below building in Chile’s Atacama Desert. It would conduct probably the most complete survey of the evening sky ever tried, photographing your complete seen southern sky each few nights for ten years! This technological marvel, outfitted with the world’s largest digital digicam containing 3.2 billion pixels, will not simply seek for the delicate results of darkish matter however will catalog billions of stars and galaxies, monitor harmful asteroids, and monitor the universe’s fixed adjustments in actual time. When it lastly begins operations, the Rubin Observatory will generate extra astronomical knowledge in its first month than all earlier telescopes mixed have collected all through historical past, that’s together with my pictures too!
The telescope options an 8.4-meter main mirror with a three-mirror design that gives an exceptionally vast 3.5-degree subject of view, seven instances the realm of the total Moon. At its core is the Legacy Survey of Area and Time (LSST) Digital camera, the world’s largest digital digicam composed of 189 particular person CCD sensors, weighing in at 3,200 kilograms and working at -100°C to minimise digital noise. Positioned at 2,647 meters elevation on Chile’s Cerro Pachón, the observatory’s design eliminates conventional mirror obstructions whereas delivering sharp pictures throughout its total subject of view. It could possibly slew between targets in simply 5 seconds and can function utilizing six optical filters, finishing a full sky survey each three nights with 15-second exposures. Over its 10-year mission, it would catalog an estimated 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars.
Artist impression of the finished LSST (Credit score : LSST Press Workplace)
It is unbelievable that it has been simply over 400 years since our first have a look at the universe via Galileo’s telescope. We are actually about to maybe hit one other unbelievable milestone because the astronomical group eagerly awaits one other historic second! On twenty third June 2025 at 15:00 UTC, the Rubin Observatory will unveil its first spectacular pictures in what they’re calling the “First Look” occasion. This occasion shall be live-streamed by way of YouTube, permitting folks worldwide to witness this thrilling second collectively. It represents extra than simply one other technological achievement; it symbolises our relentless pursuit to grasp the universe, carrying ahead Vera Rubin’s legacy of discovery into an age the place the observatory that carries her title will give us a complete new view of the universe.
Hyperlinks to the reside stream might be discovered on the Rubin Observatory web site
Supply : Coming June 23, 2025: First Look at the cosmos with NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
