This Revolutionary New Observatory Will Locate Threatening Asteroids and Millions of Galaxies
Excerpt: The casual observer may envision the night sky as being static: When we look at Orion ...or the stars that make up the Big Dipper, our view is very similar to what our grandparents, or even their grandparents, would have seen.... But ...when astronomers look at the sky more closely, countless “transient” phenomena come to light ...variable stars, ...supernovas...; and thousands of objects too faint to see with the unaided eye, like asteroids, move steadily across the sky. ...The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, nearing completion ...in northern Chile, ...with a primary mirror 28 feet across and a 3.2-gigapixel camera, will sweep across the sky night after night, requiring a mere five seconds to reposition itself after each 15-second exposure. ...its large field of view—encompassing an area equivalent to 40 full moons—and its ability to move swiftly, the telescope will scan the entire visible sky every three days. ...The camera, together with the telescope’s optics, will have enough resolving power to see an object the size of ...the White House on the moon. ...Recording images is just the first step. Every time a particular patch of sky is photographed, computer algorithms will automatically compare the view to what was seen when the same patch was previously imaged, flagging anything that’s changed. “Every night we’ll see about ten million things change in brightness or position,” says Mario Jurić, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Out of those ten million, you want to select a handful that may be worth following up.” That process, Jurić explains, will be highly automated, given that the camera will be recording more than six million gigabytes of data per year. Researchers are still developing the algorithms that will ultimately be used to sift through the enormous volumes of data. “When it [the observatory] starts in 2025, it’ll be a gold rush to figure out what’s the best algorithm to find the most interesting objects,” says Jurić. “So that’ll be super fun.” ....