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Mon 23 Jun 2025
NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory_H.-Stockebrand
The Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile has released the first images taken using its 3,200-megapixel digital camera, the largest ever built for astronomy.
A joint initiative of the US National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, the $810m facility is located on top of Cerro Pachón in the Andes in central Chile.
The observatory features an advanced 8.4-metre telescope equipped with the enormous digital camera, enabling it to scan large swaths of sky with high sensitivity and in a short time.
To put this in perspective, each image is so detailed that it would take hundreds of ultra-high-definition TV screens to display it in full.
The camera features enormous filters that allow through different types of light, from ultraviolet to near-infrared.
The telescope will later this year embark on its flagship project, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. This will capture a time-lapse record of the universe with hundreds of images of the southern hemisphere sky taken every night for 10 years.
Construction of the observatory was completed in April after 10 years, and some of its debut images have now been released.
NSF-DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory
One of the released images combines 678 separate images taken in just over seven hours of observing time.
Astronomers have said that combining many images in this way reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula – both of which are several thousand light-years from Earth.
NSF-DOE Vera C Rubin Observatory
Another image offers a sweeping view of the Virgo Cluster of galaxies. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more.
Tony Tyson, an astronomer at the University of California, Davis, who conceived the concept for the telescope in the 1990s, told Nature that the telescope performed as expected, but “seeing it is quite another thing. I am left with a sense of awe and of pride for the hundreds of dedicated engineers and scientists who made this happen.”
Catherine Heymans, an astronomer at the University of Edinburgh and the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, told Nature: “I feel like we’ve been preparing for this moment for so long, for our 10-year mission to finally get started.”
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