Math & science · June 2025

Rubin Observatory first images

The largest astronomy camera ever built opens a ten-year movie of the sky.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile released its first images from an 8.4 m telescope and a 3,200-megapixel camera. About ten hours of test data found 2,104 new asteroids, and the survey will produce about 20 TB each night.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia Source

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Cloud computing 2006
Hubble Space Telescope 1990

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Objects launched into space Latest: 4.51k per year (2025) Source: Our World in Data