Telescope with world’s largest digital camera: On a mountaintop in the Chilean desert, the world’s largest telescope with a digital camera is preparing to uncover the secrets of the universe. The capacity of this camera is so much that it can take pictures of the whole of India at the same time.
This telescope, named Vera Rubin, will take highly detailed pictures of galaxies, stars and other celestial objects. Scientists believe that with the help of this telescope we can discover new planets, black holes and other unknown celestial bodies. This telescope will take pictures of the entire sky every three nights. Scientists say that the data obtained from this telescope will revolutionize our understanding of the formation and evolution of the universe.
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Where from observatory
This new telescope is being installed in the observatory located on the 2,682 meter high Cerro Pachon mountain, about 482 kilometers north of Chile’s capital Santiago. The resolution of the camera located inside this telescope is 3,200 megapixels, which is equal to the pixels of approximately 300 cell phones. Each photo will cover an area of the sky that is equivalent to 40 full moons.
According to a CNN report, every three nights, the telescope will take a picture of the entire sky. In this way it will create thousands of photos. This will also help astronomers in their studies. Hopefully in this way, Vera Rubin will discover approximately 17 billion stars and 20 billion galaxies that we have never seen before. And this is just a beginning.
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this is the beginning
Claire Higgs, the observatory’s astronomy expert, says: “Vera Rubin will do much more, exploring the sky in a way we haven’t before. “Which gives us the ability to answer questions that we haven’t even thought about.” “The telescope will survey the night sky for exactly a decade, taking 1,000 images every night,” says Higgs. In 10 years, we will be talking about new areas of science, new categories of things, new types of discoveries that I can’t tell you about yet, because I don’t know what they are yet. And I think that’s a really exciting thing.”
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Switch-on preparation
This telescope has been under construction since 2015. It is named after American astronomer Vera Rubin, who died in 2016. Vera Rubin has many achievements in her name. The project was started in the early 2000s with private donations, including contributions from billionaires Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates. It was later jointly funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the US National Science Foundation, which also runs it along with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, a research center run by Stanford University in California.
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Although it is an American national observatory located in the Chilean Andes. For optical telescopes, you need a site that is high, dark, and dry. Referring to the issues of light pollution and air humidity, Higgs says that these reduce the sensitivity of instruments. “You want a very stable and well-understood environment, and the quality of the night sky in Chile is extraordinary, which is why there are so many telescopes here.” The new telescope is currently in the final stages of construction. It is expected to become operational in 2025. The data obtained from this will be released every year to a select group of astronomers. Then after two years, each data set will be made publicly available so the global science community can work on it.
Tags: Science news, Space Science
FIRST PUBLISHED : October 24, 2024, 4:52 PM IST