The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which houses a telescope with the largest digital camera ever built, has revealed its first images.

The telescope sits atop Cerro Pachón in Chile, under some of the most pristine skies in the world.

It houses the 8.4-metre Simonyi Survey Telescope with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera, and will take images of the skies in the southern hemisphere for the next 10 years. It is able to cover the entire night sky every few nights.

Each night, it will produce a whopping 20 terabytes of data with its 3,200-megapixel camera. In order to show an image at full size, you’d need 400 ultra high-definition televisions.

Renée Hložek, an associate professor at the Dunlap Institute and the David A. Dunlap department for astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto, is also the spokesperson for the dark energy science collaboration at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

“We normally think: ‘Oh, we need to take long exposures,’ but the camera is so sensitive that we actually take our pictures 15 seconds or 30 seconds at a time,” Hložek said. “If you took the picture for any longer, you would kind of saturate the whole camera.”

WATCH | Telescope images give 1st ultra HD images of the universe Telescope images give 1st ultra HD images of the universe Duration 2:03 The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has released the first images of the universe taken with the world’s largest digital camera inside a massive telescope. Scientists say the ultra high-definition images will provide a groundbreaking survey of space.

The size of the images released Monday is just a fraction of the actual image the telescope has taken, said Zeljko Ivezic, director of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

“The entire image is 50 times larger than what we are seeing here on screen,” Ivezic said during a news conference.

This image shows the Virgo Cluster, which contains 2,000 galaxies. The two largest in this image are NGC 4411 and NGC 4411b. (Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NSF/DOE)

Hložek is particularly excited about what the new telescope will reveal about the expansion of the universe.

“It’s game-changing,” she said of the observatory. “I’ve been waiting for this data my entire academic career.”

Unravelling the mysteries of the universe

One of the goals of this novel telescope is to help astronomers better understand dark matter and dark energy, both of which are invisible. Scientists know they exist because of how they interact in our universe.

We only see roughly five per cent of what exists in our universe. Dark energy — which is accelerating the expansion of the universe — makes up about 70 per cent.

Astronomers use special stars to measure the distances of galaxies. That in turn helps astronomers calculate the expansion of the universe. Hložek said that at the moment there are roughly 10,000 of these stars, but Rubin will reveal 500,000.

“So are we going to be able to really pin down the nature of this cosmic acceleration in a way we’ve never done before?” Hložek said.

WATCH | See the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas: See the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas Duration 0:59 Details are revealed in the region of space containing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula, as seen in new images captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Then there’s dark matter, which is believed to make up roughly 25 per cent of the universe.

The term “dark matter” was coined in the 1930s by astronomer Fritz Zwicky while observing the Coma galaxy cluster, which contains roughly 1,000 galaxies. He couldn’t explain why the galaxies in the cluster were moving faster than they should be using the theories at the time.

Then in the 1970s, astronomer Vera Rubin confirmed the existence of dark matter after studying how individual galaxies rotated. Under the laws of physics, stars at the outer rim of galaxies should be moving slower than the ones near the centre, but instead they are rotating much faster. Rubin determined that something was holding together the stars in galaxies, preventing them from flying apart: dark matter.

The Rubin Observatory will also map the Milky Way, look for asteroids and film the largest astronomical movie ever made.

WATCH | See a swarm of newly discovered asteroids: See a swarm of new asteroids Duration 0:58 This video, released Monday by the team behind the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, shows images of more than 2,000 new asteroids.

The first-look data that was released Monday also showed the discovery of more than 2,000 asteroids. But rest assured that none of them are on a collision course with Earth, Ivezics said.

“There were no surprises,” he said, regarding the number of asteroids discovered.

All the images and data are available to astronomers around the world, as well as the general public, said Clare Higgs, astronomy outreach specialist at the Rubin Observatory. There will also be citizen science projects, where the public can contribute to new discoveries.

This image shows another view of the Virgo Cluster using the 3.2-billion megapixel camera on the 8.4-metre Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. (Vera C. Rubin Observatory/NSF/DOE )

As for what astronomers hope to find with this powerful telescope, Ivezic said: “We’ll be looking for unknown unknowns.”

The astronomers at the observatory are relieved that it is finally up and running after decades of planning and construction.

“It’s great,” said Sandrine Thomas, telescope and site project scientist at the observatory. “It’s really an amazing achievement.”

In Chile, a monumental telescope has opened its eyes. The telescope at Vera C. Rubin Observatory is the largest digital camera ever built, with a resolution of 3200 megapixels. It will photograph the entire southern sky every three nights.

Today, the team behind this ambitious project released the telescope’s first images of the sky, which astronomers call “first light.”

Over 10 years, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (VRO) will create a time-lapse movie of the changing universe. Explosions from massive stars in other galaxies, pulsating stars, and asteroids make up most of the VRO’s targets. Objects like these, called transients, change on timescales observable to humans. By contrast, most things in space look the same today as they would a thousand years from now.

Unprecedented scale

The VRO will acquire astronomical data at an unprecedented scale. It will rapidly outpace the combined data of every single other telescope in history, both on Earth and in orbit. As a consequence, it will blow open the door on transient astronomy. Before the VRO, astronomers discovered thousands of supernovae every year. With it, they will discover thousands every night.

But the VRO won’t just focus on the distant universe. The camera also picks up nearby objects like asteroids and comets darting across the field of view. Today, we know of about one million of these rocky bodies in our solar system. The VRO will find five million more, dramatically improving our understanding of the danger Earth faces from medium-sized asteroids.

More than 40 international organizations contributed to the telescope, which sits on the 2,682m summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile. The telescope’s main mirror, which is the size of a small car, journeyed to Chile from the Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona.

At the press conference announcing the first light images, Chilean ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdes discussed the key role Chile plays in astronomy.

“Astronomy is part of our identity and our heritage,” he said, noting that protecting their dark skies is crucial for the world’s space science. “Today, more than 40% of the world’s astronomical observations take place in Chile.”

The mother of dark matter

Vera C. Rubin — the woman, not the observatory — made a name for herself in the mid-20th century as a determined scientist in the face of entrenched sexism. Rubin found the first evidence for dark matter when she observed that galaxies rotate faster than their visible matter explains. There must be, she reasoned, additional invisible matter holding them together.

Nowadays, dark matter is a household term, even if no one (including astronomers) knows what it is. But Rubin, like many other female scientists responsible for key discoveries, never received the Nobel Prize.

Although the bread and butter of the VRO is transients, it can also probe how light bends around distant galaxies. The amount it bends depends on how massive galaxies are — another clue to how much dark matter exists in the universe.

Harriet Kung, director of science at the Department of Energy, summarized the questions on dark matter and dark energy that the VRO will help answer.

“How can we better understand the matter and energy that make up 95% of our universe? Why is our universe expanding quickly, and how does that change over time? What role does dark matter play in how our universe evolved?”

First light

“The movie is starting,” announced Kenneth Wright, director of development for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. “The camera is running. And we’re gonna see our universe unfold before us.”

The first image revealed in today’s press conference showed two Milky Way-like spirals whirling against a background of more distant, yellower galaxies. This image comprises only 2% of the telescope’s full field of view.

Since the camera can photograph light from the near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared, the colors in this photograph are more dramatic than what the naked eye would see. Galaxies that look blue emit strongly in the ultraviolet, while reddish-yellow galaxies shine in the infrared.

Red galaxies tend to be older, made up of aging stars that don’t spit out the violet ultraviolet radiation of young blue ones. They also lose their defined spiral arms, as in the large elliptical galaxy in the first light image below. Many of the galaxies here comprise the Virgo Supercluster, a massive family of galaxies about 65 million light years away.

Moving asteroids

In a sneak peek of the VRO’s time-lapse power, the observatory’s director released a video of asteroids moving against the static background of stars. Every asteroid in this video, shown with a turquoise dot, was previously unknown. None of them are on an interception course with Earth.

In just one week, the VRO found 2,100 previously unknown asteroids.

Unparalleled resolution

The final first light image released shows the nearby Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae, yet another strength of this versatile telescope. Dark streaks against clouds of glowing dust and gas show regions of high density where baby stars are forming. Because the telescope was designed to see things very far away, turning it on such close objects allows it to zoom in with the resolution of 400 ultra-high definition TVs stacked next to each other.

A new view on the universe

Maryam Modjaz, a professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia and a member of the VRO science collaboration, explains that the VRO will transform how she does research.

“I’m particularly interested in very young supernovae, right after the explosion,” she says.

Right now, astronomers have to be lucky to find these objects. More often, they don’t catch them until days after they’ve exploded, missing crucial early information. That won’t be an issue with the VRO, says Modjaz. “We can study the stars that gave rise to those explosions in what I call a ‘stellar forensics’ investigation.”

The VRO is open to more than just astronomers. The observatory has just released its Skyviewer app, where anyone around the world can explore this project, which it calls the Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

In recent years, we have shown many spectacular images from the James Webb Space Telescope. The difference between them is that the JWST looks at very fine detail, while the Vera Rubin Observatory focuses on the big picture. After the VRO finds something new, the JWST can follow up for a more precise study.

The anticipation is over. After over 20 years of hard work, the first images from NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory (Rubin) are finally here. With a 10-hour period of observation, the telescope captured 10 million galaxies, thousands of asteroids, and stars across the Milky Way. And because of funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science (DOE), these images are only just scratching the surface of Rubin’s mission for the next 10 years.

“NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes throughout history combined,” said Brian Stone, performing the duties of the NSF director, in a press release. “Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe.”

Without further ado, here is the first look of the images from the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Vera C. Rubin Image: Millions of Galaxies

Compiled from over 1,100 images, Rubin gives us a better look at beautiful spiral galaxies and other stars. In this image, the observatory captured 10 million galaxies, which is approximately 0.05 percent of the roughly 20 billion galaxies it is set to capture during its 10-year mission.

Vera C. Rubin Image: Trifid and Lagoon Nebulas

(Image Credit: NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

According to Rubin, this image of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas, which are thousands of light-years away from Earth, combines 678 photos taken over a seven-hour period. The combination of the images helps highlight details, such as gas clouds and dust that might have otherwise gone unseen.

In this image, the Trifid nebula is located at the top right, while the Lagoon nebula is located at the bottom.

Vera C. Rubin Image: Virgo Cluster 1 & 2

(Image Credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

Above is only one section of the Virgo cluster that Rubin captured. Galaxies are observed in the background while stars from the Milky Way shine bright in the foreground.

(Image Credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

This next image is another section of the Virgo cluster. In this image, we can see two prominent spiral galaxies in the bottom right corner. Above them, we can see three galaxies merging. Beyond that is so much more to explore.

Vera C. Rubin Image: Thousands of Asteroids

During a 10-hour observation period, Rubin discovered over 2,000 new asteroids in our Solar System. Seven of these asteroids are near Earth, though they pose no threat. Other observatories across the world discovered about 20,000 asteroids, and Rubin is expected to identify millions more within the first two years of its upcoming mission.

More about the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

Rubin is located on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile and was named after Vera C. Rubin, a pioneer in dark matter research. The location has optimal dark skies and a dry climate that make it ideal for capturing images beyond our planet. Within the observatory is a powerful 8.4-meter telescope, which has the largest digital camera ever built.

Later in 2025, Rubin’s real mission will begin: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The mission will take photos of the night sky every night for 10 years to help us map the Milky Way, expand our understanding of dark matter, take stock of everything in our Solar System, and study transient objects that appear to change color or brightness.

Within the first year of this mission alone, Rubin will gather more data than what has already been collected by all other optical observatories combined, according to the press release. Rubin will give us a higher definition look at the Universe.

“Releasing our first scientific imagery marks an extraordinary milestone for NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory. It represents the culmination of about two decades of dedication, innovation, and collaboration by a global team,” said Željko Ivezić, Director of Rubin Observatory Construction in the press release. “With construction now complete, we’re turning our eyes fully to the sky — not just to take images, but to begin a whole new era of discovery.”

Read More: How Vera C. Rubin Revolutionized Dark Matter

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A graduate of UW-Whitewater, Monica Cull wrote for several organizations, including one that focused on bees and the natural world, before coming to Discover Magazine. Her current work also appears on her travel blog and Common State Magazine. Her love of science came from watching PBS shows as a kid with her mom and spending too much time binging Doctor Who.

The images and videos from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory represented just over 10 hours of test observations and were sneak peeks ahead of an event Monday that was livestreamed from Washington, D.C.

Keith Bechtol, an associate professor in the physics department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been involved with the Rubin Observatory for nearly a decade, is the project’s system verification and validation scientist, making sure the observatory’s various components are functioning properly.

He said teams were floored when the images streamed in from the camera.

“There were moments in the control room where it was just silence, and all the engineers and all the scientists were just seeing these images, and you could just see more and more details in the stars and the galaxies,” Bechtol told NBC News. “It was one thing to understand at an intellectual level, but then on this emotional level, we realized basically in real time that we were doing something that was really spectacular.”

In one of the newly released images, the Rubin Observatory was able to spot objects in our cosmic neighborhood — asteroids in our solar system and stars in the Milky Way — alongside far more distant galaxies that are billions of light-years away.

“In fact, for most of the objects that you see in these images, we’re seeing light that was emitted before the formation of our solar system,” Bechtol said. “We are seeing light from across billions of years of cosmic history. And many of these galaxies have never been seen before.”

Astronomers have been eagerly anticipating the first images from the new observatory, with experts saying it could help solve some of the universe’s most enduring mysteries and revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos.

“We’re entering a golden age of American science,” Harriet Kung, acting director of the Energy Department’s Office of Science, said in a statement.

“We anticipate that the observatory will give us many insights into our past, our future and possibly the fate of the universe,” Kung said during Monday’s event.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is jointly operated by the Energy Department and the U.S. National Science Foundation.

The facility, named after the American astronomer who discovered evidence of dark matter in the universe, sits atop Cerro Pachón, a mountain in central Chile. The observatory is designed to take roughly 1,000 images of the Southern Hemisphere sky each night, covering the entire visible southern sky every three to four nights.

The early images were the result of a series of test observations, but they mark the beginning of an ambitious 10-year mission that will involve scanning the sky every night for a decade to capture every detail and visible change.

“The whole design of the observatory has been built around this capability to point and shoot, point and shoot,” Bechtol said. “Every 40 seconds we’re moving to a new part of the sky. A simple way to think of it is that we’re trying to bring the night sky to life in a way that we haven’t been able to do.”

By repeating that process every night for the next 10 years, scientists will be able to compile enormous images of the entire visible southern sky, allowing them to see stars changing in brightness, asteroids moving across the solar system, supernova explosions and untold other cosmic phenomena.

“Through this remarkable scientific facility, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including the dark matter and dark energy that permeate the universe,” Brian Stone, chief of staff at the National Science Foundation, said in a statement.

Rubin’s first full image of the Virgo cluster shows a stunning variety of objects — from bright stars ranging from blue to red, to nearby blue spiral galaxies, to distant red galaxy groups — demonstrating the broad range of science made possible by Rubin data.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has released its first images as it begins its 10-year mission conducting the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

The LSST will revolutionize astronomy with one of its primary aims being the investigation of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the accelerating expansion of the universe, and dark matter, the strange substance that accounts for 85% of the “stuff” in the cosmos but remains effectively invisible.

From its perch atop Cerro Pachón in Chile, a mountain that rises around 5,200 feet (1,600 meters) above sea level, Rubin scans the entire night sky over the Southern Hemisphere once every three nights. This endeavor will be the most extensive continuous mapping of the southern sky ever attempted, and will be conducted by Rubin using the 8.4-meter Simonyi Survey Telescope and the LSST camera (LSSTCam), the largest digital camera ever constructed at around the size of a small car.

Just one image from the LSSTCam covers an area equivalent to the size of 45 full moons in the sky. Above is the observatory’s first image of the Virgo cluster, a vast cluster of galaxies located around 53.8 million light-years from Earth. The image shows a vast array of celestial objects, including galaxies and stars. Demonstrating the true potential of Rubin, this image alone contains a rich tapestry of about 10 million galaxies.

Staggeringly, the ten million galaxies in the above image are just 0.05% of the number of around 20 billion galaxies that Rubin will have imaged by the end of the LSST. In fact, in a decade, Rubin will have collected data on an estimated 40 billion celestial bodies, meaning we will have seen more heavenly bodies than there are humans alive for the first time.

Unsurprisingly, many of these objects are completely new and viewed by humanity for the first time today. The objects that are familiar have been highlighted in the image below.

An annotated version of the Rubin image showing some of the 10 million galaxies captured in the observatory’s first image. (Image credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA)

“The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will allow us to add depth and dynamism to the observation of the universe,” Roberto Ragazzoni, president of the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF), said in a statement.

“With this 8-meter class telescope capable of continuously mapping the southern sky every three days, we enter the era of ‘astro-cinematography’, exploring a new dimension: that of time, with which we expect to study the cosmos with a new perspective, which is now possible thanks also to the use of new information technologies to process a mass of data that would otherwise be inscrutable.”

If it moves, Rubin will see it

One of the most impressive abilities of Rubin will be its capability to study objects that change in brightness over time as it builds the “greatest movie of all time.” This unique power comes from the fact that Rubin can scan the sky at superfast speeds, around 10 to 100 times faster than similar large telescopes.

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The “transients” it sees will include over 100 million variable stars changing their brightness because of pulsations, thermal instabilities, and even because of planets “transiting,” or passing between Rubin and their visible disks.

Rubin will also be able to observe millions of massive stars as they end their lives and undergo supernova explosions. The groundbreaking observatory will also investigate so-called “type Ia supernovas,” triggered when dead star-white dwarfs undergo runaway nuclear explosions after overfeeding on stellar companions.

Type Ia supernovas are also known as “standard candles” due to the fact that their consistent luminosities allow astronomers to use them to measure cosmic distances. Thus, Rubin will also make an indirect impact on astronomy by providing scientists with a wealth of new and better-understood distances between objects in the universe.

Closer to home, by observing objects as they change in brightness in the night-sky, Rubin will provide astronomers with a better picture of asteroids and small bodies as they orbit Earth. This could help space agencies like NASA assess potential threats to Earth and defend against asteroids.

The YouTube video below shows over 2,100 new asteroids discovered by Rubin in its first week of operations alone.

“If something in the sky moves or changes, Rubin will detect it and distribute the information in real time to the entire world. This means that we will be able to observe transient phenomena in action, making new, often unexpected, astrophysical discoveries possible,” said Sara (Rosaria) Bonito of the Board of Directors of the LSST Discovery Alliance of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

“Rubin will produce a true multi-colored movie of the sky, lasting an entire decade. A movie that will allow us to see the universe as never before: not just through static images, but in dynamic evolution.”

Rubin’s power lies in the details

Hours before the release of the main images above at 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) on Monday (June 23), the Rubin team released several smaller “preview” images that are smaller sections of these larger images. These give the general public an opportunity to witness the incredible detail in images captured by the LSST camera.

“These sneak preview images already highlight the uniqueness of Rubin to look at the cosmos in a way that we have never done before, bringing the sky to life!” Andrés Alejandro Plazas Malagón, a researcher at Stanford University and part of the Rubin Observatory’s Community Science Team, told Space.com. “These preview images also already highlight the sophistication and power of the software used to reduce or ‘clean’ the images: the LSST Science Pipelines.”

The image below shows the Triffid nebula (also known as Messier 20 or NGC 6514) in the top right, which is located around 9,000 light-years from Earth, and the Lagoon nebula (Messier 8 or NGC 6523), estimated to be 4,000 to 6,000 light-years away. These are regions in which clouds of gas and dust are condensing to birth new stars.

This image combines 678 separate images taken by NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. Combining many images in this way clearly reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

The above picture combines 678 separate images taken by Rubin over just over 7 hours of observing time. By combining images like this, Rubin is capable of revealing details otherwise too faint to see or practically invisible. This reveals the clouds of gas and dust that comprise these nebulae in incredible detail.

“The Trifod-Lagoon image shows these two nebulae or ‘stellar nurseries’ highlighting regions of gas and dust, made from about 678 individual images,” Plazas Malagón said. “It’s impressive how the large field of view of LSSTCam captured the scene all at once!”

The image below shows a small section of Rubin’s total view of the Virgo cluster. The bright foreground stars in this image are located closer to home, lying in the Milky Way. In the background are many galaxies even more distant than the Virgo cluster.

This image shows a small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster. Bright stars in the Milky Way galaxy shine in the foreground, and many distant galaxies are in the background. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

The image below shows another small slice of Rubin’s total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible in the lower right of the image are two prominent spiral galaxies. In the upper right of the image are three galaxies that are colliding and merging.

This image shows another small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. (Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory)

The image also contains several other groups of distant galaxies, as well as a wealth of stars in our galaxy. It is just one 50th of the entire image it came from.

“The other preview images show a fraction of the Virgo cluster, a galaxy cluster of about 1,000 galaxies. Built from about 10 hours of data, we already see the capability of Rubin to capture the faintest objects with exquisite detail, which will enable amazing science. And these images are just about 2 percent of the field of view of a single LSSTcam image!” Plazas Malagón said.

Following the release of these images, the next big step for Rubin with be the beginning of the LSST, which should occur over the next few months.

“The Vera C. Rubin Observatory and its first LSST project are a unique opportunity for the new generation,” Bonito said. “It is a great legacy for anyone who wants to approach scientific disciplines, offering a revolutionary tool for astrophysics and new technologies for data interpretation.”

Bonito added that the astrophysics that can be done with Rubin is extremely diversified: a single observation campaign will allow us to respond to very broad scientific themes, which concern our galaxy but also dark matter, our solar system, and even the most unpredictable phenomena that occur in the sky.”

And with 10 years of the LSST ahead of it, the future of Rubin and astronomy in general is bright.

“These preview images also already highlight the sophistication and power of the LSST Science Pipelines software used to reduce or ‘clean’ the images,” Plazas Malagón concluded. “As an observational cosmologist and having worked in the development of the LSST Science Pipelines and the characterization of the LSSTCam, I’m proud and beyond excited about what’s coming!”

To dive into the first image from Rubin and explore for yourself, visit the Vera C. Rubin Observatory SkyViewer page.