Why should you join a watch party to see the first images of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

I have never gone to a surveillance party, unless you count me and two of my friends who come together to watch Taylor Swift: the Eras tour (Complete with thematic snacks). But now, it seems, I will have my chance-because the views are no longer only for the new films. In a few days, I plan to go to a surveillance party for a new telescope.

I was fortunate to be part of one of the first public groups to visit the Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile, as part of a New scientist tour. Now, a little over two years later, I can’t wait to see the first images that the huge telescope captured, which will be released on June 23.

The Vera C. Rubin observatory is an engineering marvel. It is designed to take scans from all over the sky from the southern hemisphere in just three nights – a huge step compared to all previous all -ciel surveys. Rubin will scan the sky every evening for 10 years, as part of the investigation inherited from the telescope on space and time (LSST). During this period, the project should revolutionize astronomy, answer long -standing questions on things like dark matter and find new mysteries completely.

Naturally, the images and videos that the telescope will capture will be breathtaking. To really enjoy their beauty, a phone screen will not cut it. Neither does an office. To obtain the complete definition of each individual image would take 400 ultra-HD televisions, according to the LSST UK consortium. Thus, the team encouraged its partner institutions around the world to organize surveillance celebrations, in order to appreciate the images in full definition.

What is happening exactly with each game will vary depending on the institution, many of which will be planetariums, museums or universities. You can look at the Perth Observatory in Western Australia, for example, or at the University of the City of Hong Kong. There will be parties everywhere in the United States, including the Detroit Observatory in Michigan, where participants will see scientific demonstrations and will hear local experts. But the only thing these events will all have in common is that at 11 a.m. Hae, which is at 4 p.m. GMT, the first images and videos taken by the Verra C. Rubin observatory will be published and everyone will look because they will be live.

It is likely that, with so many details captured in each image, it will take a while to appreciate them in detail – zoom in to attend the whole field of vision of this impressive telescope, but also to zoom to watch the galaxies as we have never seen them before. Rubin images will be more detailed than even those of the James Webb space telescope: its field of vision covers the equivalent area of ​​the sky in the form of 45 complete moons, while JWST corresponds to approximately 3 complete moons. There will also be Timelapse videos, taken while Rubin looks at the sky to see how he changes over time.

Of course, you will see the images online, in copies of New scientist Magazine and everywhere on social networks as soon as they came out. But if you want to mark the occasion with something a little more municipal, consult this interactive card to find a surveillance party near you – or if you cannot go there, why not accommodate yours? You will not be able to see the full definition of your home screen, but at least you can capture part of the excitement to see the images and videos around others.

I will go to a local event in the hope that I can recreate a part of the feeling of fear that I had when I stood inside the observatory and that I saw its scale – a scale which, of course, is nothing compared to that of the wider universe, that Rubin will help us to understand this little more.