A Milky Road to the Rubin Observatory

A Milky Road to the Rubin Observatory

Image Credit:
NSF,
DOE,
Rubin Obs.,
Paulo Assunção Lago
(Rubin Obs.)

Explanation:
Is the sky the same every night?

No — the night sky changes every night in many ways.

To better explore how the night sky changes, the
USA‘s
NSF and
DOE commissioned the
Vera C. Rubin Observatory
in
Cerro Pachón,
Chile.

In final testing before routine operations,
Rubin will begin to explore these
nightly changes —
slight differences that can tell us much about our
amazing universe
and its surprising
zoo of objects.

With a mirror over 8 meters across, Rubin will
continually reimage the entire
visible sky every few nights to discover new
supernovas, potentially
dangerous asteroids, faint comets, and
variable stars — as well as
mapping out the visible universe’s
large-scale structure.

Pictured, the distant
central band of our
Milky Way Galaxy appears to flow out from the
newly operational observatory.

Taken last month, the
featured picture is a composite of 21 images across the night sky, capturing
airglow on the horizon and the
Small Magellanic Cloud galaxy
on the lower left.