Rubin observatory telescope set to unveil universe's secrets

With the installation of the main 8.4-yard mirror, the construction of the Simonyi Survey Telescope, which boasts the largest digital camera in the world, has been finalized. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile announced via CNN on Wednesday that the first images of the sky are expected to be captured by the end of 2025.

According to reports, the fully equipped telescope includes three mirrors and a working ComCam camera with a resolution of 144 megapixels. In the coming months, following appropriate tests, the team will install the final component—the LSST camera, which is impressively large. Comparable in size to a car, it offers an astounding resolution of 3200 megapixels. This level of resolution equals the total pixel count of 300 cell phones combined. The camera will be capable of capturing an area of the sky equivalent to the surface of 40 full Moons.

Clare Higgs, an astronomy outreach specialist at the observatory, stated, "In 10 years, we’re going to be talking about new fields of science, new classes of objects, new types of discoveries that I can’t even tell you about now, because I don’t know what they are yet." She added that the first observations and images are planned for the end of 2025.

The telescope will image the entire visible sky every three nights, during which it will take approximately 1,000 photos. Its operation is expected to continue for the next ten years. Astronomers predict that the telescope's work will lead to the discovery of 17 billion new stars and 20 billion galaxies.

The LSST camera will be capable of taking a photo every 30 seconds, generating 20 terabytes of data daily. This amount of data is equivalent to watching movies continuously on Netflix for three years or listening to music on Spotify for 50 years. Astronomers estimate that the project will generate over 60 million gigabytes of raw data about the southern sky.

The process of transmitting each photo from the observatory in Chile to the research center managed by Stanford University in California will take only 60 seconds. There, artificial intelligence and algorithms will analyze the images for any changes or moving objects, alerting researchers to significant discoveries.

Higgs mentioned, "We're anticipating about 10 million alerts per night coming off the telescope." She added that the data would initially be available only to a select group of astronomers, but it will be made publicly accessible after two years.

The new telescope is located at the American Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón, a mountain 8,797 feet high and approximately 300 miles north of Chile's capital, Santiago. Vera Rubin, who passed away in 2016, was the scientist who first confirmed the existence of dark matter.