For the first time we have pointed to heaven with a 3,200 megapixel camera. In just 10 hours he has done several years

The world’s largest digital camera is already operational. And what he has seen in just a few hours of trial is simply overwhelming.

The Vera Rubin Observatory. Located in the privileged Watchtower of Cerro Pachón, Chile, the Vera Observatory C. Rubin points to the sky with a digital camera of the size of a small car. Its 3,200 megapixel sensor is ever built.

He has been developing more than two decades, but the wait has been worth it. What is capable of capturing They are not simple “beautiful photos” of the universe. In just 10 hours of operations, the preliminary results already exceed years of work from other observatories.

What he has seen in 10 hours. In this very brief period of time. The Rubin Observatory has been able to capture 10 million galaxies. It is only 0.05% of the 20,000 million galaxies that their operators expect to catalog during their main mission.

But also has discovered 2,104 asteroids Never seen before. This figure is surprising if we compare it with the approximately 20,000 asteroids that discover all other observatories in the world throughout a whole year. Rubin has done 10% of that work in less than half a day. Among them, he has found seven asteroids near Earth, but all out of our trajectory.

Trifida nebulous and lagoon seen by the LSST camera of the Vera Rubin Observatory

The biggest camera in the world. Financed by the National Foundation of Sciences (NSF) and the United States Department of Energy (DOE), the Rubin Observatory promises “to capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes of all history together”, in the words of Brian Stone, director of the NSF.

It is a matter of brute force. Mounted on a telescope of 8.4 meters in diameter is the space-time research chamber as a legacy for posterity (LSST), a technological feat of 2,800 kg. Each image that captures an area of ​​the sky equivalent to 45 full moons.

And who was Vera Rubin. The Observatory owes his name to the American astronomer which contributed the most conclusive evidence of the existence of dark matter, the invisible substance that seems to constitute 85% of the matter of the cosmos. The dynamic and ultra -precise map that will create the Rubin Observatory for the next ten years will play a key role to understand its nature.

The Observatory will generate approximately 20 data terabytes every night. Throughout its ten years of useful life, the final data set will reach the figure of 500 petabytes. Only in its first year will collect more data than all previous optical observatories together.

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