Astronomers through the sky with increasingly powerful telescopes. Now a new “super eye” has been added – a telescope with the largest digital camera in the world. The new Vera-C. Rubin Observatory in Chile recorded its test operation and yesterday the first recordings were published. They show high -resolution shots of millions of stars and galaxies that the telescope recorded within a few hours. Thanks to an 8.40 meter telescopic mirror and the ability to make movement and data processing, the Rubin ObServatory can record large areas of heaven in a short time. Over the next ten years, it should measure the southern sky as comprehensively than ever before and also capture short -lived events.
Despite centuries -long research in heaven, some large astronomical and cosmological questions are still unanswered or only clarified in parts. This includes the nature of dark matter and dark energy, but also details of cosmic development – for example, as was so early after the big bang of super -massive black holes. In addition, there are countless short -lived events, the causes and mechanisms of which are still unclear.
Telescope with the largest digital camera in the world
Some of the outstanding answers are now hoping for astronomers from the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. This telescope, which has just been completed, is located on the summit of the 2700 meter high Cerro Pachón. It benefits from the clear, dry atmosphere and can also create high -resolution images thanks to its 8.40 meter primary level. The heart of the telescope is the largest digital camera ever constructed: the high-resolution 3200 megapixel camera captures a heavenly area with each picture that corresponds more than the 40-fold surface of the full moon. At the same time, the telescope can move quickly and thus react to short -lived events. Thanks to the computing power of its computer infrastructure, the observatory can also process about 20 terabytes of data every night and record up to ten million changes in the observed objects in the sky. “The data volume that records new telescopes is also an unprecedented, thanks to a boom of polluting telescopes such as Vera Rubin,” says Esra Bulbul from the Max Planck Institute for Extrater Restrial Physics in Garching near Munich.
This high-resolution and at the same time wide and fast view predestines the Rubin Observatory for its task: In the course of the next ten years, it should be southern sky as comprehensive than ever. To do this, the telescope creates a overall view of the southern sky every three to four nights. At the end of the pattern-Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST)-it will have photographed each point in the sky more than 800 times highly resolved. The result is a data record with around 40 billion sky objects, including stars of the Milky Way, distant galaxies and also objects of our solar system such as asteroids. “The observatory has a wide field of vision and a deep look, it will photograph billions of galaxies at enormous distances,” says Bulbul.
The first test recordings of the new telescope now published are already showing its potential: in just ten hours of testing, the ruby observatory created sharp recordings of millions of stars and galaxies. The megapixel camera also caught thousands of asteroids in the solar system. One of the test shots presented shows two emission fog in a 5,200 light year -old star cradle in the constellation shooter. The trifid fog (NGC 6514) and the neighboring lagoon lever (NGC 6523) can be seen in the recording made from 678 individual images in seven hours. The combination of so many shots makes fine, light -shaped details. A second test show shows part of the Virgo cluster, one of the largest piles of galaxies in our local universe. It consists of up to 2000 galaxies. The new recording shows prominent spiral galaxies in the heap, as well as just merging galaxies and numerous further distant collections.
Astronomical events such as in the time-lapse film
Another central task of the Rubin Observatory is the examination of time-wide phenomena in the sky-from supernovae to star collisions to the lighting of matter, which is devoured from distant super-massive black holes. This flickering could reveal how often and quickly the central black holes used to eat galaxies. This in turn could help solve the riddle of the “impossible” big black holes in the early cosmos. The recordings of such objects repeated over the course of ten years could also show the temporal development of such early “feed orgies” for the first time. “That even provides us with a cosmic film with which we not only find distant galaxies, but can also get to the bottom of their physical properties,” explains Eduardo Bañados from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. Also in the destruction of stars on black holes-so-called Tidal Disruption Events-and the collision of neutron stars, the ruby observatory should provide the astronomers more case studies and observation data.
The distribution of the galaxies and large structures could also provide information about dark matter and dark energy and thus complement other telescopes such as the European Euclid Wildo-Remark Telescope. “The Rubin Observatory will collect more information about our universe than all optical telescopes ever built,” said Brian Stone, interim director of the National Science Foundation (NSF). The result of the pattern will be an ultra-high, large-scale time-lapse recording of the universe. “Heaven will bring to life and make a treasury of scientific discoveries,” said the NSF. The new Observatory of Vera Rubin, a US astronomer and pioneer of research on dark matter, has its name. She discovered evidence of the existence of this invisible form of material when she examined the rotation of galaxies. Rubin realized that these anomalies have to go back to dark matter in the Halo of these galaxies and their gravity effect. “Your research has fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe, it has established the dark matter as the cornerstone of modern cosmology,” says Bulbul.
Source: National Science Foundation, Max Planck Society
