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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a new telescope in Chile, released its first images in June 2025. In about ten hours of test observations it found 2,104 asteroids no one had seen before, and its first wide views captured some 10 million galaxies.

Vera C. Rubin Observatory (2025)

SpaceTechnology

The story behind the card

Rubin stands on Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes. It pairs an 8.4-metre mirror with the largest digital camera ever built, a 3,200-megapixel instrument about the size of a small car. It is named after the American astronomer Vera Rubin, whose studies of how galaxies spin gave key evidence for dark matter. In 2026 it began its ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time, photographing the whole southern sky every few nights to catch anything that moves, brightens or fades. For scale, all other observatories together discover about 20,000 new asteroids a year; Rubin found 2,104 in its first ten hours, seven of them near-Earth asteroids.

Türkçe oku
Şili'deki yeni Vera C. Rubin Gözlemevi, ilk görüntülerini Haziran 2025'te yayımladı. Yaklaşık on saatlik deneme gözleminde daha önce kimsenin görmediği 2.104 asteroit buldu; ilk geniş görüntülerinde ise 10 milyon kadar galaksi vardı.
Vera C. Rubin Gözlemevi (2025)

Rubin Gözlemevi, Şili'deki And Dağları'nda, Cerro Pachón'da kurulu. 8,4 metrelik bir aynası ve bugüne dek yapılmış en büyük dijital kamerası var: küçük bir otomobil büyüklüğünde, 3.200 megapiksellik bir aygıt. Adını, galaksilerin dönüşü üzerine çalışmalarıyla karanlık maddenin varlığına güçlü kanıtlar sunan Amerikalı gökbilimci Vera Rubin'den alıyor. Gözlemevi 2026'da on yıl sürecek büyük taramasına başladı: Güney gökyüzünün tamamını birkaç gecede bir fotoğraflayıp hareket eden, parlayan ya da sönükleşen her şeyi yakalayacak. Bir karşılaştırma: Dünya'daki bütün öteki gözlemevleri bir yılda toplam 20.000 kadar yeni asteroit keşfeder. Rubin ise ilk on saatinde 2.104 tane buldu; yedisi Dünya'ya yakın geçen asteroitlerdi.

Sources and further reading

Background reading: Vera C. Rubin Observatory
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