CNN —On a mountaintop in northern Chile, the world’s largest digital camera is preparing to power up.
The expectation is that in this way, Vera Rubin will discover about 17 billion stars and 20 billion galaxies that we’ve never seen before — and that’s only the beginning.
“We’re anticipating about 10 million alerts per night coming off the telescope,” Higgs says.
“The Vera Rubin Observatory will enable astronomers to map the distribution of dark matter like never before, based on how dark matter bends the path of ordinary starlight — a process known as ‘gravitational lensing,’” Kaiser explains.
“After all, it was her seminal work on the detection of dark matter in spiral galaxies in the 1970s that got this pursuit going,” says Natarajan.
Persons:
Vera C, —, Vera Rubin, “, Rubin, ”, Clare Higgs, Higgs, Charles Simonyi, Bill Gates, it’s, Olivier Bonin, ” Higgs, “ We’re, There’s, David Kaiser, Kaiser, ” Kaiser, Rubin Obs, Konstantin Batygin, Kate Pattle, “ Rubin, Priyamvada
Organizations:
CNN, Rubin, Department of Energy’s, Science, US National Science Foundation, Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University in, Accelerator, Survey, Netflix, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nine, California Institute of Technology, of Physics, Astronomy, University College London, Yale University
Locations:
Chile, Cerro Pachón, Chilean, Santiago, Stanford University in California, California