A brand-new, powerful telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile has taken its first space photos. These were presented on Monday.
The observatory is located high in the mountains of Chile and has the world’s most powerful digital camera. Scientists believe that the unprecedented quality of the photos will radically change the way we understand our universe.
In just ten hours, the telescope discovered as many as 2,104 new asteroids (small planets that also orbit the sun). Seven near-Earth objects were also found that we were previously unaware of. Until now, approximately 20,000 new asteroids were discovered annually in space research.
If there is a ninth large planet in our solar system, scientists say the Vera C. Rubin telescope will find it within a year. American scientists discovered last year that this ninth planet may exist. The new photos are also expected to better map the Milky Way (the galaxy of which the sun is one of the stars).
Over the next ten years, the camera in the Chilean observatory will take about a thousand images of the night sky every night. The photos should provide more clarity about the mysteries of our universe. For example, the telescope can help with research into the dark matter that makes up the universe.
The photo below shows the so-called Virgo Cluster. That is a cluster of approximately two thousand galaxies, which is about 100 billion times larger than the Milky Way.
