The team of the Vera C. Rubin observatory in Chile published its first images on Monday, revealing breathtaking views of distant galaxies and regions where the stars are formed. The observatory is appointed according to a precursing American astrophysicist who has marked science.
After taking over 20 years to emerge, the observatory published its first imagesincluding that of the trifide nebula and the lagoon nebula, several thousand light years from the earth. This composite image-to see at the head of the article-from a bright pink on a red-orange background is the result of 678 shots made in the space of seven hours.
It reveals these children’s nursery within our Milky Way in an unprecedented level of detail, making it clearly visible elements never observed before.
Billions of stars galaxies
We see the universe “teeming with stars and galaxies. The apparently empty black pockets – space between the stars in the night sky when you look at it without help – are transformed here into scintillating tapestries”, rejoices Zeljko Ivezic, director of the construction of the Vera C. Rubin observatory.
Spiral, elliptical and clusters appear in lively tones of red, blue and orange: colors revealing key details such as distance and size with unequaled precision, helping scientists better understand the history of the expansion of the universe.
>> Gallery of the first images of the Vera C. Rubin observatory:
>> To navigate in the images taken by the Vera Rubin observatory: Skyviewer
“The colors do not correspond exactly to what the naked eye would see,” explains the scientist Federica Bianco, “because the telescope captures a much wider range of wavelengths. They are rather representative: the infrared is in red to represent colder objects, while the ultraviolet is in blue to indicate warmer objects”.
Most of the 20 billion galaxies detected will be distant and not very bright, red-orange, or even a deeper red. By observing such a large number of them, scientists will be able to map the invisible network of dark matter in the universe using a subtle effect called low gravitational lens (Read box).
Identify subtle changes
Equipped with an 8.4 -meter telescope with a digital sensor of 3.2 billion pixels and the largest astronomical camera never built in the world, this observatory relies on a powerful data processing system. This observation instrument, funded by the National Foundation for the Science and the Ministry of American Energy, is located in Chile, an ideal place to observe the cosmos, thanks to a low cloud cover and a dry climate.
Later in the year, Vera C. Rubin Observatory will start the “The Legacy Survey of Space and Time” project (Reads), which will allow, in the next decade, to sweep the sky of the southern hemisphere every night, to capture the most subtle changes with unequaled precision. The goal is notably to map the Milky Way and better understand dark matter.
Follow the asteroids
The observatory is also considered one of the most powerful instruments to follow asteroids.
![The colored streaks are asteroids whose movement is recorded in the sky from left to right. This image is a combination of several observations taken with four different filters. The asteroid moves between each observation, and each filter is assigned a different color in the composite image, which gives multicolored trajectories. The observatory can take images very quickly, which allows you to capture motion objects. [NSF-DOE - Vera C. Rubin Observatory/Skyviewer]](https://img.rts.ch/articles/2025/image/t3qgk6-28922850.image?mw=1280 "The colored streaks are asteroids whose movement is recorded in the sky from left to right. This image is a combination of several observations taken with four different filters. The asteroid moves between each observation, and each filter is assigned a different color in the composite image, which gives multicolored trajectories. The observatory can take images very quickly, which allows you to capture motion objects. [NSF-DOE - Vera C. Rubin Observatory/Skyviewer]")
In just ten hours, the instrument discovered 2104 new asteroids in our solar system, including seven close to the earth and representing no danger. All the other combined observatories, whether in space or on earth, discover around 20,000 new asteroids per year.
The Rubin Observatory alone will discover millions of new asteroids in the first two years of the LSST program.
This instrument should also be the most effective in identifying interstellar objects crossing our solar system.
>> Read this 2017 article on the object baptized Oumuamua: The asteroid detected in October comes from another solar system
Stéphanie Jaquet and AFP
