Vera Rubin Observatory is about to fully change astronomy

Above by Cerro Pachón, a mountain of Chile reached over 2600 meters above sea level, the air thin. I need to attract my breath as we climb the stairs inside the Dome of the Vera C. Rubin ofnovatory. It’s cool and quiet and so much, a bit like a cathedral – until the full progress of the dome around us and open in heaven.

The night fell and above us still sits stars than I saw in my own eyes. The Milky Way shines the more power than usual, and I can only do both of the galactic neighbors, the little and Many Maglubic Clouds. However rubin telescope appears far away, more. This is a Behemoth: It provides world records for the largest digital camera and the largest lens, and weight of 350 metric tons. This is a reflection of the telescope, gathering light through mirrors, the largest of 8.4 meters across it can be a tunnel in 8.5 meters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2neujuof_g

However despite such a wash, this telescope can work very well – and that will change it what we know about our own solar system, our galaxy and universe. Every three nights, it will complete a Survey of the Southeast Sky. The past all-sky surveys took months or weeks, but Rubin would do one at least half a week, over a decade. The result will be a cosmic timelapse class.

“By taking the whole sky every three days, you can put images together,” as the observatory scientist Kevin Reil. “So after 10 years, you’re so deep, so deep, ahead of the universe, too far in time. But you also got the structure of the universe,” he said.

Understanding that structure is one of the observatory missions – to know more accurate how the black object plotting the universe. The name of the telescope, astronomer Vera Rubin, began this journey. In the 1970s, His observations of galaxies rotating explains to see that something just makes a part of the universe. He knows that the stars are external edges of galaxies that are very strongly moving – according to Kepler’s laws, they should be very slow than stars near the stars in Galactic centers.

After many years of observations and calculations, the only way to square it is to think that there should be more than we can see. The invisible things named dark matter and astronomers now believe that there are almost five times most of the cosmos as this matter is shown in the universe.

“The visible thing actually follows where the dark matter is, not the other way around,” as Stephanie Deppe to the observatory. The galaxies are thought of what astronomers call on the Webmic Web, consisting of linking filaments in the dark thing we can get the stars we see. Images from Rubin will give us our best view on this web.

Web mapping also helps open the true nature of the dark matter. Is it hot and made of light, fast moving particles or cold and made particles easier? “You can find a little break like the kinks of stellar streams,” says the Deppe. Show us where clumps in the dark stuff are beaten by a filament. Know how much a group can do with what kind of dark matter can be there. The Cosmic Web structure will also give us a better understanding of the effects of dark energy, the accelerated force facilitates the expansion of the universe.

The excitement of this precision astronomical is full of observatory. In the evening I was for observations, all was very little while. In the kitchen near the control room of the telescope, I heard eager chatter. One of the telescope operators nearly puts as he says: “I hope we can get ‘in heaven’ tonight.” That is the observatory lingo for opening the shutter of the telescope and getting images. “Oh, we,” said his workmate, smiling at a mug of tea. At sunset, we all cross our fingers for clouds to clean.

Once they do, the control room is a hive activity. Operators still work with kinks with the telescope, captured the images in the correct study. Every 30 seconds or so, someone passes, with a whoshing sound signaling shutter opened to another wheosh when it is closed. The telescope takes a snapshot side of the sky and then zips to the next place and take another, which makes another grid that can be sewn.

Everyone swims until suddenly there’s a glitch. To make the most out of a telescope that can move so quickly, the observatory uses an automated program that chooses where to point the telescope next, based on things like weather or the phase of the moon. But in a moment, this system doesn’t work. Operators have a video chat with Base Camp scientists at a time of time ‘driving the mountain. Together, they dive into the code for the system to find the problem. The arrangement was sent about 20 minutes ago and they returned and running. Regular shutter whining surgery starts again and images continue to pour.

“It’s one of the best nights we’ve had, it’s just cruising. It’s such a good data right now,” says Ie rykoffa calibration scientist. “I hope to process people now values ​​us that gives them quality science images.”

Once images are made of the telescope, they start a long but very quick trip around the world. They go to the mountain in the first 103,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cables that run even in the oceans of Atlantic or under the US sea. The images will pass through a Florida hub and then finish at the SLAC National Elecerator Laboratory in California.

Each image is about 32 gigapixels, which is part of the size of a 4k movie, and comes within 10 seconds, as William O’Mullanewho is in charge of the data for the observatory. From there, data goes to UK and France facilities that make images available to scientists around the world.

Perhaps the most urgent analysis will be done with things that are fast moving. The pulses of the night sky, blaps and changes in ways we cannot always predict – and the obrin soberbatory is hot in its tail. We never have the ability to get these actions easily, and do as we can see the fast change of things that are about to get. The telescope follows asteroids and comets zipping throughout the sky, those consisting of the main asseroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and many many called trans-neptunian matters.

“Now, we just know some thousand things” in the Kuiper belt and the oort of cloud, says the Deppe. “Rubin’s progress was probably in 10-fold in number of things we knew there.”

It can also help keep any potential threats from things close to the ground, which increases known examples from 30,000 to about 100,000. And we can still capture the strong movement of interstellar items ‘Oumuamuawho bind the solar system in 2017, or the Comet Borisov that flew in 2019.

This type of solar system can also respond to the question if there is, in fact, a Planet nine. The striking evidence for a world – a five to 10 times the masses of land in the outer solar system – derived from the kuiper belt items with common orbits. Simulations show that a planet can be blamed, but there is no direct evidence.

That will soon change. “Anyone Rubin is directly found in Planet sides, find an unknown evidence for it, or it is fully wipe out in evidence,” says the Deppe.

A mystery that is unable to resolve the telescope is the unsecured state of the US Science, which is filled under the Trump administration. Rubin was jointly funded by the US Department of Energy and US National Science Foundation (NSF), its late-found budget has overlooked half. When I asked the people in the observatory what it meant for them, no one was sure. “We will be working to think of potential impacts of FY 2026 President’s budget request,” A NSF spokesman told me later.

But back to the control room, the fund is a concern for another day. We approached midnight, but moving is not close to scientists will take data to 3 or 4 am, but no one is tired. Each time someone shouted like: “Look at these beautiful images!”

The first such images to be made publicly released on 23 June, and in the meantime, the observatory will snapping complete shots in the southern sky every three nights. “Ang tibuuk nga ideya mao, mahimo ka ba magtukod usa ka obserbatoryo nga magdala sa tanan nga mga datos nga gusto sa tanan sa kalibutan, ‘Hulaton ko ang usa ka litrato sa usa ka litrato,’ Ihatag ang usa ka litrato didto, ‘Hulaton ko ang usa ka litrato,’ Hulaton ko ang usa ka litrato sa usa ka tawo, ‘Hulaton ka lang sa usa ka tawo,” Ihatag ko lang sa usa ka tawo, “ingon ko si Reil.