The Largest Camera Ever Built Releases Its First Images of the Cosmos

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is poised to discover billions of new astronomical objects, revolutionizing understanding of everything from the history of the solar system to the workings of dark energy.

Perched atop the Cerro Pachón mountain in Chile, 8,684 feet high in the Atacama Desert, where the dry air creates some of the best conditions in the world to view the night sky, a new telescope unlike anything built before has begun its survey of the cosmos. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, named for the astronomer who discovered evidence of dark matter in 1978, is expected to reveal some 20 billion galaxies, 17 billion stars in the Milky Way, 10 million supernovas, and millions of smaller objects within the solar system.