When you look up at the night sky, nothing seems to have changed. But if you look closely, you’ll see that the sky is actually constantly changing. Satellites, asteroids and interstellar objects pass by. Stars not only shine brightly, but they can also suddenly explode with energy or explode into bright supernovae.

There are many explosive and catastrophic phenomena waiting to be witnessed. For physicists, this is an opportunity to study our universe and physics that cannot be replicated on Earth.

A whole new era of discovery begins. NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. For the next 10 years, Rubin will create high-definition videos of the southern sky, revealing our universe in an unprecedented way. Many of the objects discovered will have never been seen by the human eye before.

Over 20 years of development

This moment took Rubin Observatory more than 20 years from conception to completion.

Located on a dark-sky mountaintop in Chile, this observatory represents a generational leap in astronomy with its ultra-wide-angle, depth, and high-resolution imaging capabilities.

Rubin has the largest 3,200 megapixel camera ever made. Each image scans an area equivalent to 40 full moons. The image resolution is so high that if you point your camera at a lime 24 kilometers away, you’ll be able to resolve exactly what type of fruit it is.

Last year, Rubin surprised us with the following accomplishments: first test image. These images reveal a swarm of new asteroids never before detected, stars changing in the Milky Way, and beautiful deep images of the galaxy. This is just a taster of what’s to come.

This telescope is Space-time heritage investigation. In this 10-year study, I’m just getting startedwhich aims to solve the greatest mysteries of the universe and the nature of the physics that exist within it.

20 billion galaxies

With its advanced image processing capabilities and systematic scans of the sky, Rubin will image an incredible number of objects in our universe over the next decade.

Starting in our cosmic backyard, the solar system, we will detect an asteroid 6 million times. Moving towards our galaxy would create a catalog of 17 billion stars. Further afield, color images of 20 billion galaxies will be collected.

The same part of the sky is photographed up to 100 times a year. With an expected 10 terabytes of image data per night, Rubin will deliver more data per year than all optical observatories combined.

Using this data, we aim to answer fundamental questions. These include the nature of the most mysterious components of our universe. dark matter and dark energy.

I’m particularly interested in using the data to measure whether the expansion of the universe maintains a constant acceleration or changes over cosmic time. This accelerated expansion of the universe It is thought to be caused by dark energy.making up 70% of our universe. But we still don’t know what it is.

The measurement itself would be surprising, especially since recent observations suggest an expansion rate. may be changing. From a physics perspective, this allows us to narrow down which potential theories could explain dark energy.

space treasure fire hose

To find objects in the sky that change, compare the new image to the “old” or reference image. Differences between the two images reveal new objects or changes in brightness.

So how can we find the most interesting exploding stars and asteroids among this mass of detections?

Rubin chose seven.”community brokerThe broker is both the infrastructure and the team that takes this data firehose within minutes of discovery, processes it to find the most attractive objects, and makes them available to the public.

One of these community brokers is Fink, which I have the privilege of co-leading.

Fink is made up of hundreds of scientists and engineers around the world who work together to understand the universe. The incredible Rubin data offers great opportunities, but also great challenges.

It requires cutting-edge technologies such as distributed computing (networks of computers similar to commercial cloud services) and artificial intelligence tools to process data at high speeds. We’re talking about analyzing thousands of detections every 1-2 minutes from Rubin, and up to 10 million detections every night for 10 years.

Rubin Become a Citizen Scientist

You can also communicate with Rubin now.

Rubin’s first image is available online and in apps such as: orbit viewer Track asteroids and view deep images. sky viewer.

You too can become a Rubin citizen scientist. For example, you can identify changing objects in space by: rubin difference detective and find the comet rubin comet catcher.

Data from community brokers is also publicly available. our fink portalthe latest findings from Rubin will be available for inspection just minutes after the image is taken.

The data may not look like Rubin’s amazing first-light images. But they come directly from the telescope and are full of cosmic treasures.