Vera C. Rubin telescope turns on. Seeing lightyears away through the eyes of a telescope
On a mountain in Chile, a new observatory is scanning the skies and taking images of everything from nearby asteroids to galaxies lightyears away.
Eight meters in diameter, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory can capture about a hundred times more sky than some other smaller telescopes or observatories, aided in part by the location’s crisp and cool air.
Along with taking massive cosmic photos, it’s also studying things like dark matter and dark energy.
Ted Von Hippel, a professor of physics and astronomy at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, said the scientific community is excited because of the broad range of things the observatory can do.
For instance, Hippel named just a few of its capabilities like looking “for near earth asteroids, which have very practical applications for those of us who live on this planet…more esoteric goals, which is to study the dark matter and dark energy distribution and what it means, as well as a whole lot of projects on the Milky Way and stars that change their brightness suddenly.”
In some cases, the observatory is too good – and can pick up the location of spy satellites. Hippel said to preserve the data and secrets from our government, the data is processed and is released to astronomers about three days later – after it’s been scrubbed.
“Satellites during dawn and dusk are illuminated by the sun, so there's a reflection off of them, and it's easily going to pick up essentially all the satellites or all military things that our government doesn't necessarily want us to know where they are,” Hippel said.
Aside from secret satellite data, the images and information gathered by Vera C. Rubin will be easily accessible to astronomers and the public. For Hippel, he’s using this new observatory for his own astronomy research involving distant stars.
“Personally, in my own research, I'm going to be looking at the yearly data products to try to find the stars that I'm interested in,” Hippel said. “I work on the ages of stars, and I'm going to be looking at some very distant stars in our galaxy.”
The Martian rovers continue to search for ancient signs of life
On our neighboring red planet, NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rover, are busy exploring craters, mountains and the overall terrain of Mars.
While our rover friends climb Martian mountains, it’s the scientists on Earth working behind the scenes that make it all possible. University of Florida’s Amy Williams, a member of the rovers’ science team, said Curiosity is busy at work in the Gale Crater.
While the rover has been going through the Gale Crater for about 12 years now, climbing up part of a Martian Mountain called Mount Sharp, Curiosity is now in a new area of region. Williams said this site has only been seen from orbit until now.
“What we've been climbing through on Mount Sharp are these rocks and minerals that normally form when water is sort of drying out, and you're getting basically salts that form from that drying out water,” Williams said. “It’s really cool to see this box work because this formed deep underground.”
Williams said this area is like a snapshot of the Gale Crater’s deep history. Aside from observing the area, she said the team also drilled into the area to collect a sample.
“The drill name actually was pretty special this time,” Williams said. “It's named Altadena. That is the name of an area in southern California near the Jet Propulsion Lab that was dramatically impacted by the Eaton fires. It’s this sort of, homage, like Altadena is forever on Mars because so many people who work at JPL lost their homes in the fires, and they lived in Altadena."
This Boxwork area Williams mentioned can be seen through a 360 panorama NASA released. In the panorama, Williams said the public can get a better sense of how vast the area is and to see exactly where Curiosity has been exploring. Plus, Williams said you can actually see the tracks from the Curiosity rover in the Martian terrain.
“The whole rover can fit into the void space that would have been within one of these Boxwork structures,” Williams said. “Of course, this was all in the subsurface. It was solid, except for groundwater moving through it, but if you think about it, this used to be deep under the mountain, and now it's eroded away in such a way that the rover can roll across it.”
Curiosity’s planetary partner, the Perseverance Rover, is also exploring a Martian Crater-- traversing through the crater rim of Jezero.
Perseverance is part of the Mars Sample Return mission to bring samples back to Earth from the red planet. Right now, Williams said the rover is exploring the crater and the science team on Earth is trying to pick out what she calls “that perfect sample.”
“We've been sort of characterizing this region,” Williams said. “Hopefully we'll narrow down on that great sample to collect, and then we're going to continue going south for a little while, as we have more of this diverse crater rim to explore.”
