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Vera Rubin Observatory offers glimpse into the deep and wide universe

Published: 24 Jul. 2025, 00:05

Moon Hong-kyu

The author is a principal researcher at the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute.

More than 100 researchers recently packed the main lobby of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute to witness the first images of the Virgo Cluster released by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The crowd was silent as more than 200 eyes were fixed on the screen, captivated by the sharp images captured from a distant corner of the universe.

Perched 2,647 meters (8684 feet) above sea level on Cerro Pachón in northern Chile, the observatory resembles a giant resting face down, peering up at the sky. Housed inside the observatory's uniquely angular dome is the Vera Rubin Telescope — an instrument unlike any other built before.

This image captures not only Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, but one of the celestial specimens Rubin Observatory will observe when it comes online: the Milky Way. The bright halo of gas and stars on the left side of the image highlights the very center of the Milky Way galaxy. The dark path that cuts through this center is known as the Great Rift, because it gives the appearance that the Milky Way has been split in half, right through its center and along its radial arms. [VERA C. RUBIN OBSERVATORY WEBSITE]

Its primary mirror spans 8.4 meters, about half the size of a basketball court, and is designed to trap 840,000 times more photons than the human eye. A single 15-second exposure can detect stars a billionth as bright as Polaris. When those images are layered over a decade, the telescope can detect even fainter celestial bodies — down to just one-thirteenth of that brightness.

What sets the Rubin Observatory apart is not just its depth but its breadth. Equipped with a 3.2-gigapixel camera — 16 times the resolution of a modern smartphone — it captures a field of view wide enough to fit 45 full moons into a single frame. Scientists joke that viewing just one raw image at full scale would require 400 UHD televisions.

The observatory is set to image the Chilean night sky twice weekly over the next 10 years. These time-lapse images, when compiled, are expected to contain clues to cosmic mysteries such as dark matter and dark energy. Researchers anticipate the discovery of some 200,000 near-Earth asteroids over the course of the survey.

Each night, the telescope produces 20 terabytes of data, equivalent to about 20,000 HD movies. Managing this data volume presents a formidable challenge. Google Cloud has committed to storing and rapidly processing Rubin’s data for the next decade, building its own system with internal resources. The company aims to develop solutions applicable to future data industries.

While the observatory's capabilities inspire awe, they also provoke reflection. Korean researchers studying topics ranging from cosmology to asteroid tracking are just beginning to immerse themselves in the vast digital universe that the Rubin Observatory will unveil.

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.