A comprehensive look at Vera Rubin Observatory; The human eye deep into the night sky

The Vera Rubin Observatory, which has been called one of the engineering masterpieces and the best inventions of 2025, plans to reveal the secrets of the universe with its 3200 megapixel camera and during a 10-year program, and human knowledge from solar system, milky way galaxy, dark matter and The expansion rate of the universe to increase

The newest astronomical telescope is a cosmic photographer that takes about 10,000 pictures of the sky every night atop a mountain in Chile. With giant mirrors that focus starlight into a 3,200-megapixel camera, the Vera C. Observatory is expected to In the next decade, Rubin will reveal billions of cosmic objects and solve some cosmic mysteries.

On June 23, 2025 (Tir 2, 1404), “Vera C. Observatory Vera C. Rubin Observatory presented its first images to the scientific community and the public. These eye-catching images, beyond their aesthetic value, were considered a big step in astronomy and heralded the start of the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project.

The history of the construction of the Vera Rubin Observatory

Rubin Observatory got its name from the American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who carried out fundamental research to prove the existence of a strange and invisible substance in the universe; A substance that was later called “dark matter”. In the 1960s, he and his colleagues, by studying the rotation speed of about 60 galaxies, found that the rotation speed of their edges cannot be due to the gravity of the visible matter inside them, and an invisible matter must act as a gravitational glue for them.

Astronomer Vera Rubin
Credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF

The observatory program began in the early 1990s as a project to push the frontiers of astronomy and was originally called the Dark Matter Telescope, but was renamed the Large Aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope in 2001, presented as a proposal in the report Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium. This indicated that its mission had expanded beyond the study of dark matter.

Between 2001 and 2010, it received $30 million in grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the US Department of Energy (DoE), and software billionaires Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates, and finally, under the name Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or LSST, construction began in 2015.

Human dimensions in front of the Vera Rubin Observatory

In the same year, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory began assembling LSST’s powerful digital camera. Finally, this camera was completed in April 2024 and installed in the observatory in March 2025. The mirrors and the base of the telescope had arrived at the construction site in early 2018. In December 2019, the telescope was named after Vera Rubin to honor the legacy of the pioneering astronomer and staunch supporter of women in science, who died in 2016. In fact, it is the first major publicly funded astronomy center in America to be named after a woman.

Specifications of the Vera Rubin telescope

With the Simonyi Survey Telescope and the world’s largest digital camera, the Legacy Space-Time Survey Camera (LSSTCam), the half-billion-dollar Rubin Observatory will scan the entire visible sky of the Southern Hemisphere at different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, from infrared to visible wavelengths that our eyes have evolved to see.

The location of this telescope in Chile and above the peak of “El Peñón” of the “Cerro Pachón” mountains at an altitude of 2647 meters above sea level has been chosen to take more than 800 panoramic images every night using the dry conditions and clear skies of northern Chile and thus cover the entire sky once every three to four nights.

Vera Rubin Observatory on top of the mountain

The observatory telescope uses a unique optical system with three mirrors, which is designed to achieve a very wide field of view and minimal distortion. The main mirror with a diameter of about 8.4 meters (effective diameter about 6.5 meters) is considered one of the largest telescopic mirrors in the world, and the second and third mirrors are responsible for correcting the light path and improving image quality, respectively. The third mirror is integrally cast with the primary mirror, increasing optical stability and collimation accuracy.

Recording of the images observed by this observatory is done with the help of a powerful camera. This 3200 megapixel camera is the size of a small car and weighs 3 tons, making it the largest digital camera in the world. The most important characteristics of this observatory can be seen in the table below.

Repetitive imaging of the sky is also possible with the help of the fastest telescope base that has ever been designed for a telescope with this size and wide field of view. The stand rotates every 5 seconds to look away with minimal vibration. In this way, Rubin can observe the way dim celestial bodies change over time and create a detailed 10-year movie of the cosmos.

The method of surveying the sky by the Vera Rubin telescope
Credit: NOIRLab

Vera Rubin’s mission

The main mission of the Vera Rubin Observatory is to answer the most fundamental questions of cosmology; In particular, Rubin’s observations could finally reveal the secrets of dark energy, the mysterious force that accelerates the universe’s expansion, and dark matter, collectively known as the Dark Universe.

Inside the Vera Rubin Observatory with powerful telescope mounts
Credit: H. Stockebrand/RubinObs/NSF​/AURA

By examining the large-scale structure of the universe and its evolution over time, this observatory provides data that allows scientists to study the distribution of mass in the universe with unprecedented precision and seriously test current models of the universe’s expansion and gravity. In this way, it will form an observational framework for testing the fundamental theories of physics and cosmology.

Vera Rubin also examines the structure, history, and changes of the Milky Way and its surrounding galaxies. By gathering extensive data from stars and galaxies, researchers can reconstruct the process of galaxy formation, galactic mergers, and the role of dark matter in these events. This mission will help to better understand the evolution of galaxies over billions of years and to know the position of the Milky Way in the cosmic network.

Some of the 10 million galaxies imaged in Vera Rubin’s first image
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA

But you can’t pass by watching the house with such a wide view. Vera Rubin is also in charge of studying the details of the solar system, identifying and tracking small objects in the solar system, including asteroids and potentially dangerous comets, to provide a comprehensive picture of the population of these objects and their trajectories. The data of this probe will also better reveal the history of the formation of the solar system and its interaction with the galactic environment.

The four main scientific fields considered in the observatory’s mission are:

• Understanding the nature of dark matter and dark energy
• Create a list of the solar system
• Mapping the Milky Way
• Exploring objects whose position or brightness changes over time.

Exploring the Dark Universe

One of the most important phenomena that Rubin will investigate is cosmic explosions called “supernovas”. The observatory is expected to detect between 3 and 4 million more supernovae at various distances during the 10-year survey, which will be an important step in our understanding of the physics of these cosmic explosions.

When massive stars die, their elements are ejected in supernovae with powerful nuclear collapse and continue to form the building blocks of the next generation of stars. An extensive catalog of these events would paint a much more detailed picture of the life, death, and rebirth of stars.

Including the observation of type Ia supernovae and determining the reddening of their spectrum is a suitable way to measure cosmic distances, which in turn can be used to measure the “Hubble constant” or the expansion rate of the universe, and this is the key to understanding the influence of dark energy in cosmic history.

Vera Rubin Observatory
Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/A. Pizarro D

To get to the root of dark matter, which makes up about 85% of the total matter content of the universe, Rubin will examine different galaxies. The observatory is expected to catalog more than 10 billion galaxies in the Southern Hemisphere sky.

In this way, the large-scale structure of the universe becomes more apparent, and astronomers can trace galaxies flowing along dark matter filaments. These filaments are thought to be a kind of cosmic scaffolding along which galaxies have gathered and grown. The size and voids between them can help reveal the nature of dark matter.

Searching our cosmic backyard

Rubin and the LSST project are set to make important contributions to our understanding of our cosmic neighborhood, including mapping the Milky Way in unprecedented detail. This cataloged 10 billion stars, including faint stars that were missed in previous attempts thanks to Rubin’s infrared vision.

Cataloging stars beyond the Milky Way’s halo and measuring their chemical composition could help determine how our galaxy and its stellar content have evolved over billions of years.

Rubin can also detect the movement of dim and high-speed objects by scanning the sky multiple times. The objects, many of which could be free-floating wandering planets, have been ejected from their star systems by gravitational interactions.

Milky way galaxy next to Vera Rubin observatory
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/DOE/NSF/AURA/B. Quint

The observatory is also expected to detect thousands of brown dwarfs or so-called “failed stars” in the Milky Way. With masses ranging from 13 to 80 times that of Jupiter (0.013 to 0.08 times the mass of the Sun), these objects are thought to form in the same way as stars, but cannot accumulate enough material to reach the mass required for nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in their cores. This makes them very dim and elusive. While they are very important for understanding how stellar objects form and evolve.

List of solar system objects

Rubin is supposed to make a significant contribution to the cataloging of asteroids and other small objects close to the Sun. The first set of solar system observations published by Rubin included a staggering 2014 unknown asteroids. These asteroids included 7 near-Earth bodies, 11 Jupiter Trojans, and 9 Proneptunian bodies. This collection was part of about 4,000 observations of asteroids and comets made by Rubin.

Vera Rubin and Moon Observatory
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/H. Stockebrand

Right now, with all its telescopes and observatories, mankind discovers about 20,000 asteroids every year, and this means that Rubin has discovered more than 10% of this number in just a few nights.

Still, its discoveries can be unexpected. As one member of the observatory’s scientific team says, this is a discovery machine, and one of the most exciting aspects is the unexpected discoveries ahead!

Vera Rubin; Human investment to know the universe

The Vera Rubin Observatory is one of the largest astronomical projects of the 21st century, whose purpose is defined as an unprecedented expansion of human understanding of the universe: from revealing the nature of dark matter and dark energy to investigating the large-scale structure of the universe, the evolution of galaxies, and more precisely measuring the expansion rate of the universe.

Vera Rubin with M41 during First Look observations
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/P. Horálek

After decades of planning, investment and technological development, this unique observatory is now launched and is set to catalog billions of galaxies and stars, record millions of cosmic events such as supernovae, provide a detailed map of the Milky Way and its formation history, and re-catalogue asteroids and other solar system objects. A key tool that will advance the frontiers of cosmic knowledge and better reveal our space neighborhood.

Photo Credit: NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory

Sources: Space, National Geographic