The largest digital camera ever built, located at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, has begun its cosmic survey. This survey aims to capture images of unseen corners of the universe, mapping billions of stars in the Milky Way and billions more galaxies beyond it.
Cosmic Survey Details
Perched on a Chilean mountaintop, the telescope will point its eye at the southern sky for the next 10 years, taking hundreds of images per night. Researchers hope the observations will help them take a better census of the universe, glimpsing fainter objects that previously eluded detection.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory released its first images last year, including colorful shots of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas located thousands of light-years from Earth. Since then, researchers have tuned up the equipment so it’s ready to take pictures at the depth and accuracy required for the decade-long survey.
Funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy, the observatory is named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who offered the first tantalizing evidence that a mysterious material called dark matter might be lurking in the universe.
Original reporting: Texarkana Gazette — read the source article.
