The Vera Rubin Observatory, located in Chile, recently activated its telescope equipped with the 3,200 megapixels, the most powerful in the world. This state-of-the-art instrument promises to reveal important secrets of the universe, including the mysterious nature of dark energy, dark matter, and cosmic events that are still poorly understood. A key objective of the mission is also the identification of the enigmatic Planet Nine, a celestial body thought to be located in the remotest regions of our Solar System.
“It wasn't just a success; it was an extraordinary success”.”, said Vera Rubin programme manager Victor Krabbendam, commenting on the quality of the first images taken by the telescope. Designed to have a extremely wide field of vision, telescope is able to peer into huge portions of the sky and obtain crucial information on cosmic phenomena of great scientific importance.
At the moment, the telescope has completed a test phase with a reduced camera, but within a few months the instrumentation will be upgraded with the 3,200 megapixel LsstCam, which will guarantee a field of vision 21 times higher compared to the current one.
A leap forward in cosmic observations
The first image taken by the Vera Rubin Observatory is a small square made up of nine panels, covering an area of sky almost double the surface of the Full moon. When the telescope is fully operational, the area covered by the images will be approximately 45 times that of the full Moon, allowing the sky to be explored in an unprecedented way.
The Vera Rubin telescope is dedicated to one of the scientists pioneering the study of dark matter, and aims to collect an extraordinary amount of data on phenomena such as the gravitational waves and the supernovae. This data will be crucial to better understand the distribution of dark matter and energy. In addition, its wide field of view will make it ideal for cataloguing small celestial bodies in the Solar System, such as asteroids, and to detect traces of mysterious objects, such as the Planet Nine.
Planet Nine is a hypothetical body that could lie beyond the orbit of Neptune, in an extremely remote and difficult-to-observe region. The Vera Rubin Observatory, with its incredible ability to map vast areas of sky, may finally provide evidence of its existence, solving one of the most fascinating enigmas in our knowledge of the universe.
The new camera is scheduled to be installed by March 2025. After a series of tests, the first scientific images are expected to be published in June and July 2025, marking the beginning of a new era in astronomical research.
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