A new observatory enables it to look back into the history of space than ever before. Researchers are hoping for knowledge about dark matter and dangerous asteroids. The technology behind it sets standards.
After months of testing and calibration, the new “Vera C. Rubin” observatory at the Cerro Pachón in Chile delivered the first spectacular pictures from space. A recording shows the trifid fog and the lagoon lever, which are thousands of light years from Earth in the Milky Way. In a second picture you can see two spiral galaxies of the Virgo cluster, which is around 50 million light years from the earth outside the Milky Way.
In addition to a large telescope with an 8.4 meter main mirror, the US observatory also has the largest digital camera ever built with a resolution of 3,200 megapixels. The University of Heidelberg and the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy participate in software development.
The camera-which bears the name “Legacy Survey of Space and Time”, which in German means “Legacy pattern of space and time”-will take about a thousand pictures of the southern sky in the next ten years and ultimately reproduce the entire visible sky around 800 times. A huge data record with almost 40 billion sky objects is to be created, including stars of the Milky Way and Far Galaxies.
More data about the universe than all telescopes together
This corresponds to a amount of data of 20,000 gigabytes every day. Unthinkable that human astronomers look at all of these recordings or analyze this huge data mountain. Even ordinary computer programs would be overwhelmed here. Advanced algorithms such as neural networks and machine learning play a central role in the search for abnormalities – i.e. for patterns or changes – in the data.
“The Rubin Observatory will capture more information about our universe than all optical telescopes in history,” said the managing director of the US National Science Foundation, Brian Stone, when the first pictures were presented. “With this remarkable scientific institution, we will research many secrets of the cosmos, including the dark matter and dark energy that penetrate the universe.”
Rubin will probably find things that nobody suspects anything about the existence
Scientists also want to locate asteroids with the observatory that are approaching the earth and thus potentially a danger. Further research focuses on the mapping of the Milky Way and the observation of short -lived phenomena such as star explosions and the incorporation of stars through supermass ponds.
“The discoveries could lead to the emergence of completely new areas of astronomy,” says Adam Miller from Northwestern University in the USA. “Rubin will very likely find things that nobody suspects anything.”
Eduardo Bañados from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg wants to use the delivered pictures to examine very young galaxies with black holes in the center. “These are the galaxies that existed when the universe was still a baby – younger than a billion years.” So far, researchers have been a mystery why these young galaxies already have black holes with a considerable mass. “It is as if we have discovered adult adults in kindergarten,” says Bañados.
What the new Rubin telescope is supposed to research
Five million new asteroids alone hope to track down the sky researchers in the region between Mars and Jupiter, the asteroid belt. 1.4 million are currently known there. In addition, there are several hundred thousand asteroids on a different path. Some of these objects can approach Earth and therefore potentially pose a danger. The researchers hope to increase the number of known asteroids to ten times and thus to capture 70 percent of the dangerous objects with sizes above 140 meters.
And the outer solar system beyond the Neptune Railway is also to be subjected to a thorough inventory with the “Vera Rubin Observatory”. There a large number of icy objects buzzing around, including five dwarf planets such as Pluto, which have hardly changed since the solar system was created 4.5 billion years ago. The research of this distant ice world could provide the astronomers new knowledge about the early days of the solar system.
So far, the scientists have known about 3,300 such transneptunic objects. With the new telescope and its high -quality camera, they hope to increase this number to 37,000. Among them could also be other dwarf planets of similar size to Pluto. Or even “Planet 9”, another large planet that has been speculated and argued in sky research for decades.
But so spectacular the discoveries in our solar system expected by the researchers may be – it is not the only and not even the originally planned task of the new telescope. The first ideas for a large telescope for the sky through the early 1990s circulated. At that time, the goal was to deal with mysterious dark matter in the center of the project.
DPA/WB
