Rochester was one of more than 200 locations around the world to host a “First Look Watch Party” for the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory —an advanced telescope expected to answer some of the universe's greatest mysteries.
The event was live-streamed Monday at the Strasenburgh Planetarium at the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Attendees watched thousands of twinkling galaxies, swirling pink nebulas, and even asteroids appear tile-by-tile in an immersive, full-dome format.
Director Jim Bader called the images “awe-inspiring.”
“They don't just inspire people to study science,” he said. “They inspire people to do art. They inspire people to tell stories, and to really think about the true nature of the universe.”
The Rubin Observatory, located in the Chilean Andes, is home to the world’s largest digital camera ever built for astronomy. Every few nights for the next ten years, the observatory will capture images of the entire visible sky.
To do so, the camera — which is the size of a small car — will rely on three mirrors, one of which was developed in Rochester.
The Rubin Observatory Secondary Mirror (M2) was made by Corning in Canton, New York, and refined by L3Harris Technologies in their Rochester facility. At about twelve12 feet in diameter, it is the largest convex mirror ever made, which presented a challenge to its engineers.
“I like a challenge,” said Becky Borelli, a principal fellow at L3Harris.
Borelli said they had to innovate almost every level of their manufacturing process to shape the mirror, which had to be precise to the order of a micron — that’s one-one thousandth the width of a human hair.
“If we had an error that small,” she said, “it would ruin their ability to get the images that they're going to show today.”
This series of images will create the most detailed time-lapse record of the cosmos ever captured, helping astronomers to see phenomena like exploding stars and colliding galaxies in real time, and maybe offer more information about one of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
The observatory is named for Vera C. Rubin, an American astronomer often known as the Mother of Dark Matter. While dark matter doesn’t interact with light directly, dense regions of dark matter can bend light, and experts hope the observatory that bears Rubin’s name will help scientists observe dark matter and dark energy.
“If you have billions and billions of measurements of different galaxies all over the universe, you can start to map out where the dark matter is,” said Fred Moolekamp, a Penfield-based research scientist with the Rubin Observatory.
The telescope’s imaging is also expected to detect countless new objects in our solar system, like asteroids, some of which may one day pose a threat to Earth.
“There’s potential that some of those could interact with us at some point,” Moolekamp said. “Knowing that it's there actually does make a difference.”
Although only a small number of people could attend the planetarium reveal, the images are expected to be released to the public online. Scientists say the public will play a crucial role in helping analyze the information.
