First celestial image from revolutionary telescope

A new powerful telescope in Chile published its first images, showing its unprecedented ability to look in the dark depths of the universe.

In an image, large colored gases and dust clouds swirl in a region of star formation of 9,000 light years from the earth.

The Vera C Rubin observatory, which houses the most powerful digital camera in the world, promises to transform our understanding of the universe.

If a ninth planet exists in our solar system, scientists say that this telescope would find it during its first year.

It should detect killers asteroids over a striking distance from the earth and map the Milky Way. It will also answer crucial questions about dark matter, the mysterious substance which constitutes the majority of our universe.

This unique moment for astronomy is the beginning of a continuous 10 -year filming from the southern night sky.

“Personally, I have been working at this point for about 25 years. For decades, we want to build this phenomenal installation and do this type of investigation,” said professor Catherine Heymans, royal astronomer for Scotland.

The United Kingdom is a key partner in the survey and will host data centers to treat extremely detailed snapshots while the telescope sweeps the sky capturing everything on its way.

Vera Rubin could increase the number of objects known in our tenfold solar system.

BBC News visited the Vera Rubin Observatory before the Images released.

It is located on Cerro Pachón, a mountain in the Chilean Andes which hosts several observatories on private lands dedicated to space research.

Very high, very dry and very dark. It is a perfect place to watch the stars.

Maintaining this darkness is sacrosanct. The bus route from top to bottom of the winding road at night must be done with caution, because the full beam headlights should not be used.

The interior of the observatory is no different.

There is a whole engineering unit dedicated to ensuring that the dome surrounding the telescope, which opens onto the night sky, is dark – extinguishing the LED thugs or other wandering lights which could interfere with the astronomical light which they capture in the night sky.

The light of the stars is “sufficient” to navigate, the scientist Commander Elana Urbach.

One of the major objectives of the observatory, she adds, is to “understand the history of the universe”, which means being able to see weak galaxies or the supernova explosions that occurred “billions of years”.

“So we really need very clear images,” says Elana.

Each detail of the design of the observatory has similar precision.

He succeeds thanks to his unique design of three mirrors. The light enters the telescope of the night sky, strikes the primary mirror (8.4 m in diameter), is reflected on the secondary mirror (3.4 m) on a third mirror (4.8 m) before entering its camera.

Mirrors must be kept in impeccable condition. Even a grain of dust could change the quality of the image.

The high reflectivity and the speed of this allow the telescope to capture a lot of light that Guillem Megias, an expert in active optics of the observatory, known as “really important” to observe things “very far which, in astronomy, means that they come from previous times”.

The camera inside the telescope will repeatedly capture the night sky for ten years, every three days, for an investigation inherited into space and time.

At 1.65 mx 3m, it weighs 2,800 kg and offers a large field of vision.

It will capture an image approximately every 40 seconds, for about 8 to 12 hours per night thanks to the rapid repositioning of the dome support and moving telescope.

He has 3 200 megapixels (67 times more than a iPhone 16 Pro camera), which makes him so high resolution that it could capture a golf ball on the moon and require 400 ultra HD TV screens to show a single image.

“When we had the first photo here, it was a special moment,” said Megias.

“When I started working with this project, I met someone who has been working there since 1996. I was born in 1997. It makes you realize that it is the effort of a generation of astronomers.”

It will be due to hundreds of scientists from around the world to analyze the data alert flow, which will reach a summit at around 10 million per night.

The survey will operate in four areas: the mapping of changes in the sky or transient objects, the formation of the Milky Way, the cartography of the solar system and the understanding of dark matter or how the universe has formed.

But his greatest power lies in his constancy. He will study the same areas again and again, and each time he detects a change, he will alert scientists.

“This transitional side is the unique really new thing … which has the potential to show us something that we had not even thought before,” said Professor Heymens.

But that could also protect us by detecting dangerous objects that suddenly move from the earth, including asteroids like YR4 that scientists were briefly worried at the beginning of this year to break in our planet.

The very large mirrors of the camera will help scientists detect the least of light and the distortions emitted from these objects and follow them as they accelerate in space.

“This is a transformer. It will be the largest set of data with which we have never had to look at our galaxy. This will feed what we do for many years,” said Professor Alis Deason at the University of Durham.

She will receive the images to analyze how far the stars reach the Milky Way.

Currently, most of the stars data go back to around 163,000 light years, but Vera Rubin could review at 1.2 million light years.

Prof-Deason also expects to see in the halo stellar of the Milky Way, or its stars cemetery destroys over time, as well as small satellite galaxies which always survive but which are incredibly weak and difficult to find.

It is believed that Vera Rubin is powerful enough to finally resolve a long -standing mystery on the existence of the planet nine of our solar system.

This object could be up to 700 times the distance between the earth and the sun, far beyond the range of other telescopes on the ground.

“He will take us a lot of time to really understand how this new observatory works. But I am so ready for that,” said Professor Heymans.

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