Kind: captions
Language: en
These are some of the first images
released by the new Vera Rubin
Observatory, revealing a slice of the
cosmos in more detail than ever before.
Nova was at the observatory in Chile as
scientists fired up the entire system
for the first time.
We'll show you the very first photo the
telescope took in a moment. But first,
what is this thing and why does it have
astronomers so excited? We call it dark
energy, but we really don't know what it
is. Some people have spent 20 years
waiting for this moment.
[Applause]
It's fantastic.
The Vera Rubin telescope is massive.
It's equipped with an 8.4 mirror and
Earth's largest digital camera. The
camera has 3.2 billion pixels. That is
by far the largest digital camera ever
built. The camera has three lenses, is
the largest lens ever built for
astronomy, over 5 ft across, and it's
collecting a ton of data quickly. It has
already discovered over 2,100 new
asteroids in just 10 hours of test
observations.
The telescope will gather more
astronomical data in its first year than
all the other optical telescopes in
history combined. It will image the
entire southern night sky every 3 to
four nights. The Reuben Observatory is
unique in its capabilities. We can do
things that no other telescope can
really do. Compared to the space
telescopes Hubble or Web, we see a huge
part of the sky in every image and we're
designed to take images fast. The camera
can collect the image in a little over
two seconds. The telescope can move from
one place to another in 5 seconds. Over
time, researchers will be able to detect
new distant objects and see how they
change. By observing them repeatedly,
and over the course of 10 years, they
will put together a movie of the cosmos.
By then, they will have gathered about
60 million billion bytes of imagery. And
we anticipate we will have about 40
billion objects, not million, billion
with B in our images. That will be the
first time that astronomers cataloged
more objects than the living people on
Earth. We'll see every part of the sky
almost a thousand times. That gives us
an extra dimension, too. We'll see what
changes. So, we'll discover tens of
thousands, if not a hundred thousand
exploding stars, supernova. We'll see
millions of variable stars in our own
galaxy, the Milky Way. We'll see
millions of asteroids, moving objects in
the solar system. And I think we'll also
be able to discover objects that change
that we don't quite expect.
These sorts of observations will help
astronomers understand some of the
biggest mysteries in the cosmos like
dark energy and dark matter, the
mysterious stuff that make up most of
the universe. Here's the galaxy. In
fact, the telescope is named after famed
astronomer Vera Rubin who first forced
astronomers to confront the idea of dark
matter.
Nova was there for the test in spring of
2025 when the team attempted to focus
the camera and take the very first
images.
But in the first test of the telescope,
everything looked like
cereal.
And after that first image, which looks
like a bowl of Cheerios that you eat in
the morning, we adjusted the optics in
our telescope. The image appeared to
show a series of rings because the
telescope optics were not in proper
focus. To fix this, the team had to
adjust the distance between the
telescope's camera and its massive
mirror, shifting the camera ever so
slightly. And the question is, do we
move it towards the mirror or do we move
it away from the mirror? And
theoretically, we know or else you can
just guess and see if it gets better or
worse.
Both of those are about the same. I
always go in a positive direction. Think
positively if you don't know any better.
As the team fine-tuned the telescope
systems,
the image became more and more
clear.
[Applause]
We just acquired the greatest image in
the history of astronomy.
Congratulations.
[Applause]
It's the first time this camera sees
anything coming from the sky. That was
our first image and it means a lot to
me. It might not be the prettiest image
when you think about astronomy, but to
me it was extremely rewarding and very
beautiful.
In June 2025, the Reuben Telescope team
released the first official images
revealing the Virgo cluster, the closest
collection of galaxies to us,
and the Tripfid and Lagoon Nebula.
It's just the start of what promises to
be a spectacular decade of discovery.
[Music]
Thanks for sticking around. Don't forget
to subscribe to see more videos from
Nova and click the bell icon to make
sure you don't miss anything. See you
again soon.