Astro Blog

By Kenneth Chang  and  Katrina Miller , The New York Times.  Excerpt: Vera C. Rubin Observatory...telescope, more than two decades in the making, will provide a comprehensive view of the night sky unlike anything astronomers have seen before. The project’s scientists revealed some of the first imagery it released on Monday. ...The observatory’s treasure trove of data will allow astronomers  to investigate dark energy , a force pushing the universe to expand ever faster,  as well as dark matter , a mysterious substance that behaves somewhat like galactic glue. Closer to Earth, it will identify asteroids that might be on a collision course with Earth. ...The level of detail in the Rubin images is impossible to convey on a computer screen or a newspaper page. As a result, the Rubin team has developed  Skyviewer , which lets people zoom in and out of the giant images....  Full article at https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-telescopes-firs...

https://www.science.org/content/article/new-space-telescope-embarks-biggest-3d-map-universe By DANIEL CLERY , Science. Excerpt: The European Space Agency (ESA) today  released the first pictures of galaxies  taken by its new space telescope, Euclid, which aims to help researchers understand the dark components that make up 95% of the universe. ...the Perseus Cluster..., one of the most massive structures in the universe, shows 1000 of its galaxies 240 million light-years from Earth, as well as 100,000 more distant ones, some as far away as 10 billion light-years. Over its 6-year mission, Euclid, launched in July, is  expected to take 30,000 such images , cataloging 1 billion galaxies across one-third of the sky. Researchers will use them to create the biggest 3D map of the universe, spanning three-quarters of its history....