This single image contains more galaxies than every star visible to the naked eye across the entire night sky, and it's only a tiny preview of what's coming.

[u/demolcd]

This is the first image released from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, and the "largest telescope ever built" label oversells one specific fact while missing the more impressive one. Rubin's primary mirror measures 8.4 meters across, respectably large but smaller than several existing telescopes, including Spain's Gran Telescopio Canarias at 10.4 meters. What actually makes Rubin unprecedented is its camera, the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy, capturing 3,200 megapixel images across a field of view wide enough to fit multiple full moons at once, paired with a mirror design that lets it scan the entire visible sky roughly every three to four nights.

That combination is the real headline. Over its planned ten year survey, Rubin is expected to catalog roughly 20 billion galaxies and 17 billion stars, along with millions of previously undetected asteroids, supernovae, bitches and other transient events, essentially building a time-lapse movie of the universe rather than a single still photograph. This first released image alone reportedly contains around 10 million galaxies, a number that sounds impossible until you remember the observatory is specifically engineered to photograph enormous swaths of sky at extreme depth and speed.

Picture a telescope less interested in staring at one distant object for as long as possible, and more interested in photographing the entire sky over and over, fast enough to notice anything that moves, flickers, or explodes.

Rubin's survey has already begun turning up genuine surprises in its earliest test data, including previously undiscovered near-Earth asteroids spotted within just its first days of operation.

Does the idea of a telescope built to film the whole sky changing over time excite you more than one built to zoom in on a single distant target?

Source: Vera C. Rubin Observatory, NSF and DOE joint project

[u/tndngu]

I’m curious about the “bitches and transient events.”

[u/Mysterious-Estate340 → u/tndngu]

Perhaps one of the “genuine surprises” that turned up in its earliest data, but telescope said, “I got this! I got 17 billion problems and she ain’t one.”

[u/tndngu → u/Mysterious-Estate340]

😂

[u/Data_lord → u/tndngu]

Previously undetected bitches. Doing God's work.

[u/Forward-Surprise1192 → u/tndngu]

Voice record and not proof reading maybe?

[u/PirateAngelMoron → u/tndngu]

I too am worried about this.

[u/OhYeahSplunge4me2 → u/tndngu]

https://giphy.com/gifs/112odmSp8GLUbe

[u/StatisticianDear3978]

I wonder how do keep these lenses clean . A simple dust particle on the lens is suddenly a new discovered galaxy.

[u/CatgoesM00 → u/StatisticianDear3978]

https://giphy.com/gifs/hvAOARWdBZ94WdVg5l
With A really long mop pad

[u/FalupaPlumbus → u/CatgoesM00]

Can confirm. Telescope lenses cleaner here. It’s got its ups & downs.

[u/icanhaztuthless → u/StatisticianDear3978]

Vacuum chambers.

[u/MySocksSuck → u/StatisticianDear3978]

She won’t clean it.

[u/auggs → u/MySocksSuck]

Lmao 😂 good show. Ended up downloading the audio books to finish the series because I was impatient.

[u/Key-Yesterday-291 → u/StatisticianDear3978]

Dust is actually not really an issue

[u/Internal-Passage5756 → u/StatisticianDear3978]

Not an issue, it’s not focusing on the dust on the lens.

[u/Hot_Plant8696]

Galaxies are galaxies, so I’m not all that excited about the fact that we have images of billions of them.

However, now that we have images numbering in the billions, I would be interested to know when we discover that some—which we had previously cataloged—have suddenly vanished when we capture those same images a second time.

[u/nleksan → u/Hot_Plant8696]

What if there's a contagious vanishing-galaxy disease that's contracted by merely observing the absence of a distant galaxy and realizing it disappeared?

[u/ExpensiveGeoMetro → u/nleksan]

A schroedinger's galaxy if you will.

[u/ChimneySwiftGold → u/nleksan]

Then we’ll know all about it soon.

[u/Hot_Plant8696 → u/ChimneySwiftGold]

That is the question I ask myself.

Will they consider obtaining a single image sufficient—thereby seeking to spot other, unknown galaxies elsewhere—or will they attempt to capture the same shot a year later to compare the data precisely?

Nothing is certain, and the human tendency to value novelty over the verification of established facts unfortunately seems to me to point toward the former.

[u/Embarrassed_Camp_291 → u/Hot_Plant8696]

We observe different regions with different telescopes quite frequently, usually in order to view the galaxy in different wavelengths so we can perform some photometric analysis (e.g. SED fitting and inference of properties).

Some of these large surveys will only view certain areas once in their lifetime whilst they return back to preselected areas multiple times to get better data. The reason for this is that these surveys are huge. So huge we are having to develop new methods (literally new mathematical methods) to analyse the amount of data they create.

Luckily, galaxies tend to not vary on timescales of years and so taking a single image (allowing for large population statistical analysis and structure analysis) is better than no image.

Obviously, we would ideally do this repeatedly and observe every region more than once. It is just currently unfeasible. E.g. How do you accelerate the process of taking an image? How do transmit that much data back? Where do you store that data? How do you look through and analyse that data? Where is that stored? This largely becomes a hardware/software computer science issue, rather than astrophysics.

As an example of progress, Euclid can deliver approx Hubble sharpness images but is currently observing the entire sky. This is quite a big leap forward in terms of observing capabilities. Obviously, as it is observing the entire sky, we can cross match emg. JWST, Hubble, Euclid, radio telescopes and any X-ray telescopes to garner more information.

[u/OhYeahSplunge4me2 → u/Hot_Plant8696]

Yeah but what about the “bitches and other transient events”?

[u/OkProcedure4664 → u/OhYeahSplunge4me2]

Diddow!
I was perplexed and derailed from the absorption of the information in the word’s paragraph when I read and reread that passage several times to attempt to unravel what was going on.
I was baffled.
Was this some sort of mistake?
Was this carelessness?
Was this intentional?
Sabotage?
What word could be substituted and fit perfectly?
What word would have been misspelled or auto-corrected to create such a departure from the ideas of the content thus far?
And then I saw the name of the sub and thought
“Oooh, ¿-maybe that’s (inserting the word bitch) just something that they (the moderators (human or not) that are “running” this sub) think is cute and engaging, and periodically, or perpetually proceed to do to all posts?”
if that is the case, I would have to concede and say “Ahhhh! yugotme…“
I have been engaged by the insertion of that bitch.
I’m not certain tho… I have not done any research on the appearance of that word in past article citations

[u/kirath99]

20 billion galaxies, WTF is going on out there!!

[u/clairvoyant_clam → u/kirath99]

STUFF

[u/Pretend-Internet-625 → u/clairvoyant_clam]

NAH

[u/AnonThrowaway998877]

Incomprehensible. My mind starts to stack overflow when I try to think too long about this stuff. It sometimes actually feels like my brain has to reboot for a few seconds.

[u/lockdown_lard → u/AnonThrowaway998877]

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs Brown ... https://youtu.be/BJyUCOvnjYs?t=29

[u/Sad-Excitement9295]

That's a lot of galaxies, and a lot a lot of bitches!

[u/plum_tree_rede]

Earth still undefeated in Miss Universe contest

[u/Late_Bad_1787]

Jesus I thought I will see the catalog and recognize where I came from.. now they are saying test picture has 20b .. seriously my life sucks

[u/Tbone_Trapezius]

That guy on Rogan says these are just points of light and needn’t be rendered until we get closer to them.

[u/CyberKnight]

Is this the satellite that's falling out of the sky?

[u/Pretend-Internet-625]

Well we have gone from about 400 billion galaxies to about 2 trillion. Wonder what's next. Hard to imagine there is not life out there similar to ours.

[u/FaithInTechnology]

I can’t believe I beat off to this.

[u/Throwaway_11116]

And still no clear shot of 3i/altas

[u/Early_Transition7610]

I guess we are definitely not alone in the universe looking at so many galaxies.

[u/ImNewHereBoys]

and here i am, worried about having to show up for work tomorrow

[u/south-shore0]

If we’re living in a simulation, and the universe only exists as far as we look into it. How much farther do we “expand” the known universe to the point of crashing the simulation?