The first images of the largest digital camera in the world reveal galaxies and cosmic collisions
The images and videos of the Vera C. Rubin observatory represented a little more than 10 hours of testing observations and were seen before an event on Monday which was broadcast live from Washington, DC
Keith Bechtol, an associate professor of the Physics Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has been involved in the Rubin Observatory for almost a decade, is the scientist for the verification and validation of the project system, ensuring that the various components of the observatory work properly.
He said the teams were struck down when the images are broadcast from the camera.
“There were moments in the control room where it was just a silence, and all the engineers and all the scientists only saw these images, and you could see more and more details in the stars and the galaxies,” said Bechtol at NBC News. “It was one thing to understand at the intellectual level, but at this emotional level, we achieved essentially in real time that we did something that was really spectacular.”
In one of the newly released images, the Rubin observatory has been able to identify objects in our cosmic district – asteroids in our solar system and stars of the Milky Way – alongside much more distant galaxies which are billions of light years.
“In fact, for most of the objects you see in these images, we see the light that has been issued before the formation of our solar system,” said Bechtol. “We see light from billions of years of cosmic history. And many of these galaxies have never been seen before. ”
Astronomers impatiently anticipate the first images of the New Observatory, experts saying that this could help resolve some of the most durable mysteries in the universe and revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos.
“We are entering a golden age of American science,” said Harriet Kung, acting director of the Science Bureau of the Energy Department, in a press release.
“We plan that the observatory will give us many information about our past, our future and perhaps the fate of the universe,” Kung said at the Monday event.
The Vera C. Rubin observatory is jointly operated by the Department of Energy and the National Foundation of American Sciences.
The installation, named after the American astronomer who discovered evidence of dark matter in the universe, is at the top of Cerro Pachón, a mountain in the center of Chile. The observatory is designed to take around 1,000 images from the sky of the southern hemisphere each night, covering the whole southern sky visible every three at four nights.
The first images were the result of a series of test observations, but they mark the start of an ambitious 10 -year mission which will involve scanning the sky every night for a decade to capture every detail and a visible change.
“The entire observatory was built around this ability to point and pull, point and shoot,” said Bechtol. “Every 40 seconds, we move in a new part of the sky. A simple way of thinking about this is that we are trying to give life to the night sky in a way that we could not do.”
By repeating this process every evening for the next 10 years, scientists will be able to compile enormous images from all over visible south, allowing them to see the stars change in the brightness, asteroids moving through the solar system, supernova explosions and other incalculable cosmic phenomena.
“Thanks to this remarkable scientific installation, we will explore many cosmic mysteries, including dark matter and dark energy that permeates the universe,” said Brian Stone, chief of staff to the National Science Foundation, in a press release.
