Stunning Photos of the Cosmos From the World’s Largest Digital Camera

Millions of iridescent stars, far-off remote galaxies, and swarms of hurtling asteroids are just a few of the cosmic phenomena captured in the first images taken by the world’s largest digital camera. The Vera Rubin Observatory, a new United States-funded astronomy facility stationed in central Chile, shared its inaugural findings with the public at an event in Washington, DC, yesterday, June 23, kicking off what is expected to be a transformative breakthrough in astronomical research.

Named after the trailblazing American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who first uncovered conclusive evidence of dark matter, the observatory is jointly financed by the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy’s Office of Science and is the outcome of more than two decades of work. Equipped with a digital camera weighing approximately 6,200 pounds (~2,812 kg) and a telescope measuring over 27 feet (~8.4 meters), its facilities are located atop of Cerro Pachón in the Andes Mountains — an area known for its arid climate and lack of light pollution, providing some of the best star-gazing in the world.

Later this year, the Rubin will embark on its first major project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), during which it will take about a thousand ultra-wide, high-definition photos of the sky every night for the next decade to compile a “time-lapse record” of our ever-changing universe. Every three to four nights, its scans will cover the entire visible Southern Hemisphere sky.

“Making the world’s largest digital camera will let scientists explore the cosmos in new ways, and at a scale that enables discoveries that should fundamentally change our understanding of the Universe,” director of the LSST Camera Aaron Roodman said in a statement.

Already, the first images taken by the LSST camera have astounded researchers.

In roughly 10 hours of observation, the camera discovered a swath of 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids, seven of which are in close proximity to Earth (but thankfully pose no danger). For comparison, all other observatories situated on the ground and in space combined discover around 20,000 asteroids every year. 

The observatory also released a composite photo of the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula (massive clouds of gas and dust where stars are formed), both located several thousand light-years away from Earth in the Milky Way galaxy. The photo, which was taken over seven hours, consists of 678 separate images.

Alongside the first glimpse photos, the Rubin also launched an online interactive platform that allows the public to engage with a portion of the observatory’s findings and explore the universe on their own. The Skyviewer app, which was developed by a team of astronomers, educators, and web designers, features a sonification tool that allows individuals to explore the cosmos through sound.

In a statement, the president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Matt Mountain, said that the field is on the “brink of transformation.”

“It is not every day that a revolution stares you in the face, but that is precisely what the Rubin Observatory team — together with our colleagues at the NSF and DOE — has delivered with these first images,” Mountain said.

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