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.
NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
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NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory
A powerful new observatory has unveiled its first images to the public, showing off what it can do as it gets ready to start its main mission: making a vivid time-lapse video of the night sky that will let astronomers study all the cosmic events that occur over ten years.
“As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. But a snapshot doesn’t tell the whole story. And what astronomy has given us mostly so far are just snapshots,” says Yusra AlSayyad, a Princeton University researcher who oversees image processing for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
“The sky and the world aren’t static,” she points out. “There’s asteroids zipping by, supernovae exploding.”
And the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, conceived nearly 30 years ago, is designed to capture all of it.
“These images are fantastic. They’re incredibly high resolution. But they’re just a tiny, tiny fraction of what’s been captured,” says Kevin Reil, a staff scientist with SLAC National Accelerator Lab who is working at the observatory in Chile. He notes that the newly released image that shows many galaxies is small section of the observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster. “We just happened to zoom in on this little piece.”
Built with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, the facility will collect a mind-boggling amount of data on the entire southern night sky during a decade-long survey slated to start later this year.
