Vera C. Rubin Observatory Unveils First Images Ahead of Decadal Sky Survey
CHILE, JUN 24 – The observatory’s 3,200-megapixel camera captured over 2,000 new asteroids and millions of galaxies in its first 10 hours, starting a decade-long survey of the southern sky.
- On June 23, 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory shared its initial set of images captured from its location atop Cerro Pachón in Chile.
- This achievement caps over two decades of international cooperation and sets the stage for Rubin Observatory’s forthcoming decade-long astronomical survey mission.
- Equipped with its 8.4-meter aperture telescope named after Simonyi and the 3.2-gigapixel LSST camera, the observatory captured a highly detailed 14.1GB image showcasing 10 million galaxies in the vicinity of the Virgo cluster.
- Within just 10 hours, the observatory identified over 2,000 previously unknown asteroids and is projected to discover around 5 million by the mission’s conclusion, while collecting a volume of data that surpasses that of all other current optical telescopes combined.
- The data release marks the start of a new era in astronomy, enabling study of dark matter, transient phenomena, and cosmic evolution with unprecedented scope and temporal resolution.
197 Articles
197 Articles
STUNNING first images of the sky obtained with the world’s largest camera
The exceptional quality of these initial images show that the telescope is ready to start its mission: to scan the entire southern hemisphere sky by taking 1,000 high-definition photographs using six colour filters, every three nights for the next ten years.
NSF, DOE’s Rubin Observatory will create a massive data trove. A cloud-based platform and nightly alerts will deliver it to researchers.
Images from the U.S. government’s Vera C. Rubin Observatory unveiled last week provide a level of detail previously unseen, adding to the corpus of known space objects and representing the culmination of two decades of work and investment. They’re also merely the beginning of the decade-long data stream. The new photos were taken in just over 10 hours of observation time at the Chile-based facility jointly funded by the National Science Foundati…
'New era in astronomy.' Penn State helps develop world's most powerful survey telescope
Professors at Penn State helped develop the world's most powerful survey telescope, which released its first images earlier this week from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The images capture cosmic phenomena at an "unprecedented scale," the observatory said…
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