Chapter 1: What groundbreaking images did the Vera C. Rubin Observatory capture?
You've probably seen images from the James Webb Space Telescope, those intricate portraits of deep space that spark our imagination. But here on Earth, a new, ground-based observatory has started capturing images that are every bit as extraordinary.
If you watched my video in 2020 about the most exciting telescope that nobody was talking about, then you may remember just how thrilled I am about the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Perched atop the Cerro Pachon mountain in Chile, this observatory just captured its first ever images with the help from the largest digital camera ever built.
This camera, roughly the size of a small car and weighing around 2,800 kilograms, boasts an astonishing 3.2 billion pixels per image. To put that in perspective, it would take you about 385 4K televisions to display just one of the photos from this telescope. That is a staggering amount of data. In fact, the survey can collect around 20 terabytes of data in a single night.
Since the observatory is located in Chile and the data center is in the United States, a dedicated 100 gigabit internet connection was built to connect the facility to Miami, Florida. where it taps into the existing infrastructure. The first official images were released in June 2025, and in my opinion, they're among the most breathtaking astronomical images I've ever seen.
And this is just the beginning. So what do these first images show us? How were they taken? And what will astronomers be hoping to learn from this ambitious project in the years ahead? I'm Alex McColgan, and you're watching Astrum. Join me today as we unveil these stunning images and explore how this groundbreaking observatory could transform our view of the universe.
Although some operations have begun, final testing is expected to wrap up by late 2025, and just as this facility is destined to become a legend in modern astronomy, it carries the name of a woman who was a legend in her own right. In the 1960s, when women were rarely seen in astronomy, Dr Rubin was credited with discovering the first compelling evidence for the existence of dark matter.
and she did so while balancing both her career and motherhood. It's fitting that such a pioneering observatory bears the name of an equally pioneering astronomer. And, like its namesake, the Rubin Observatory will not disappoint. Part of what makes images so crisp from space telescopes like Hubble and Webb is their vantage point from outside of Earth's atmosphere.
From space, they are able to avoid the distortion of weather and light pollution, issues that typically plague ground-based telescopes. That's exactly why the Rubin Observatory was built on a mountain in the Atacama Desert of Chile, giving it one of the best observing locations anywhere on Earth. Its extremely dry air and dark skies make for the perfect conditions for ground-based astronomy.
and the new observatory isn't alone. The area is also home to several other observatories, including the Southern Astrophysical Research Telescope, the Gemini South Observatory, the Giant Magellan Telescope, and the European Extremely Large Telescope. This location has proven itself time and again as an exceptional observing spot.
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Chapter 2: How does the design of the Simonyi Survey Telescope enhance its capabilities?
Instead, it's funded by the United States National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, and is managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. Inside the Rubin Observatory is the Simonyi Survey Telescope, which became the seventh largest telescope in the world when it was completed. Its primary mirror spans 8.4m, with a 3.5m secondary mirror.
But size isn't everything. What makes it truly unique is its third 5m mirror. Most telescopes use a two-mirror system to focus light and correct optical distortions that can come from the curve of the mirror, but the Simonyi survey telescope uses three, giving it an extraordinarily sharp view.
Attached to the end of this powerful telescope is an equally impressive camera to record what the telescope sees. It's the largest camera ever constructed, measuring about 3 metres long and 1.6 metres wide. Designed to capture ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared light, it uses a robotic arm to place filters in front of its sensors.
Named after the Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or the LSST, the camera will support this decade-long sky survey. The LSST camera is made up of 189 individual sensors, and outfitted with three large fused silica lenses. Each exposure covers 10 square degrees of the sky, giving it superb optical performance, That is quite a wide angle of visibility.
One single image can capture an area of the sky equal to about 45 full moons. If you compare these stats to previous surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the LSST is essentially doing, every three days, what SDSS took 20 years to do. SDSS steadily built up a map covering 35% of the sky over its 20 year run, but the LSST can map the entire visible sky in the southern hemisphere, or 50%,
with every 3 day scan. The 10 year duration of the LSST is not strictly to cover a wider area of the sky, but to map our cosmos in a temporal dimension, building up a searchable time lapse movie of the changing sky, and tracking its changes over time like never before. Like any sky survey, the LSST is meant to look for anything and everything in the night sky.
However, it does have four main scientific goals. To investigate dark matter and dark energy, to catalogue solar system objects like asteroids and comets, to monitor transient events like supernovae, variable stars and gamma ray bursts, and to map the stars of the Milky Way. Surveys like Gaia, Pan-STARRS, DESY, and Sloan paved the way, but Rubin will take things further.
For example, it's expected that data from Rubin will allow us to identify millions of new asteroids, vastly expanding our catalogue and creating a dataset unlike anything we've ever had before. Luckily for us, we won't have to wait 10 years to see what this new observatory has in store. The LSS team will release images throughout the project, letting the world follow along as discoveries unfold.
As mentioned earlier, the first of these images were released just in June 2025, and I think you're going to love them. After just over 10 hours of test observations, the Rubin Observatory had already captured cosmic phenomena on an unprecedented scale. Millions of stars and galaxies, thousands of asteroids, and these images represent just a small preview of what's to come.
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Chapter 3: What unique features make the LSST camera stand out?
It's the closest large cluster of galaxies to our own. This 25 square degree mosaic reveals an astonishing variety of stars and galaxies. It combines multiple exposures of the same area, each taken at different times and with different filters to reveal faint details that may otherwise go unseen. Let's zoom in to a few highlights.
In the upper left, two prominent spiral galaxies dominate the view, with a trio of merging galaxies just above them. Threads of material stretch between them, and both nearby and distant galaxy groups populate the scene, along with a few foreground stars from our own Milky Way. On the opposite side of the image is an extraordinarily dynamic area nicknamed Cosmic Drama.
Here, bright stars from our galaxy shine in the foreground, with dozens of nearby galaxies clearly visible, and a distant sea of reddish galaxies forming a speckled backdrop. This image contains some 10 million galaxies, and that represents just 0.05% of the 20 billion galaxies that the Rubin Observatory is set to observe over the next decade.
Another early image is this striking mosaic of two nebulae taken over just 7 hours and made up of 678 individual images. In a single exposure, the dust and clouds that make up these nebulae may be faint or invisible, but by combining hundreds of exposures, these details become clearer. At the centre of the mosaic is the Lagoon Nebula, or Messier 8, situated about 5200 light-years from Earth.
This kidney-bean shaped pink area is one of only a few star-forming nebulae that are visible with the naked eye, although faintly in mid-northern latitudes. If you were to look at this nebula through a telescope or binoculars, you would see what looks like a spot of greyscale clouds.
This is because the human eye can only detect certain wavelengths of light, but the Rubin Observatory is able to capture a broader range. These additional wavelengths can be added into the picture as different colours. For example, in this image,
The infrared light, typically associated with cooler objects, is assigned the colour red, while the warmer, ultraviolet wavelengths are assigned to blue. For comparison, here is an optical image of the same Lagoon Nebula taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2018.
As you can see, the Hubble image is rich in detail, and similarly uses various added colours to represent information that the human eye can't see on its own. In this case, the colours represent different particles detected across the image. You might also notice that this Hubble image is very close up. It's only about four light years across.
However, the Rubin Observatory gives a much wider view of the Lagoon Nebula. In fact, the difference is shocking.
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Chapter 4: How is the LSST expected to revolutionize our understanding of dark matter?
Let's take another look at the Rubin mosaic image. Not only does this wide field of view show the entire Lagoon Nebula, but we can also identify several other objects. At the top, you can spot a swarm of blue lights. This is an open star cluster known as Messier 21.
Just below that, the pink and blue glow of the Trifid Nebula, also known as Messier 20, sits about 9000 light years away in the constellation Sagittarius, and can sometimes be spotted with small telescopes. Directly below that is another open star cluster known as Bochum 14.
and towards the bottom centre of the mosaic image is a tightly packed globular cluster known as NGC 6544, which is home to tens of thousands of stars. The sheer number of stars and galaxies visible in these images is staggering, and to think that on the larger mosaic image, this globular cluster is just a tiny speck. And it's not just pretty images.
The Rubin Observatory is already producing real scientific results. In just about 10 hours, the observatory was able to identify 2,104 asteroids in our solar system that had never been seen before, including 7 near-Earth asteroids, which you'll be happy to hear, pose no threat to us.
For comparison, about 20,000 new asteroids are identified every year through the combined effort of all other ground and space-based observatories. Rubin alone is expected to discover millions of new asteroids within its first two years of operation. It may also be our best tool yet for spotting interstellar visitors passing through the solar system like Amur Amur or 2i Borisov.
Astronomers estimate that interstellar visitors like these pass through our inner solar system about once a year, but we've only recently gotten survey telescopes capable of spotting them, like the Pan-STARRS-1. And now, the Rubin Observatory. And that's not all.
The observatory also spotted 46 subtly pulsating stars, known as RR Lyrae stars, a type of ancient pulsating star that are often used to measure distance. Over the course of the survey, Rubin is expected to find up to 100,000 more of these stars, with some potentially stretching more than a million light years from Earth.
By finding these stars, Rubin can help astronomers to map the outer reaches of our Milky Way and explore its structure. In the first year alone, Rubin will collect more optical data than all previous observatories combined.
By the end of the survey, it's expected to generate around 500 petabytes or 500,000 terabytes of data, containing billions of objects and trillions of measurements, a true goldmine for researchers. Once final testing is complete, the Rubin Observatory will repeatedly scan the southern sky, capturing fleeting cosmic events in real time while building a decade-long time-lapse of the universe.
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Chapter 5: What significant discoveries have been made by the Rubin Observatory so far?
If you've loved the latest James Webb space images, you need to see what I'm about to show you. ESA's Euclid Space Telescope has sent back its first batch of images, and they're some of the best space pictures I've ever seen. Known as Euclid's first light, this photo collection is a dazzling tour of the universe's galaxies, and scientists are freaking out at what they are seeing.
Euclid's photos call into question our ideas of how the universe evolved, give new insight into the role of dark matter in structuring the cosmos, and even let us peer into the past by capturing galaxies 10 billion light years away. Plus, the photos themselves are just awesome, especially the last one. I'm Alex McColgan and you're watching Astrum.
Join me today on a tour of what Euclid has captured so far, from glistening galaxies and swirling nebulae, to star nurseries and even rogue planets. Let me show you why Euclid is such a unique telescope and how scientists plan to use its data to unlock the origins of the universe. On the 1st of July 2023, the European Space Agency launched the Euclid telescope from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
After travelling about 1.5 million kilometres, it joined its siblings, the Gaia and James Webb telescopes, in orbit around the Lagrange Point 2. This location is ideal for studying and imaging deep space. It allows telescopes to keep the Sun, Moon and Earth behind them at all times so that they never interfere with observations. It's also close enough to Earth that communications are easy.
Since L2 keeps pace with Earth's orbit around the Sun, we stay close to our instruments. Euclid's six-year mission is designed to explore the composition and evolution of the universe. It will do this by building the largest and highest quality 3D map of the cosmos we've ever seen. In October 2024, Euclid started sending back the first pieces of this map, and I'll show them to you in a second.
As Euclid continues to scan the sky over the next years, scientists hope the new data will help them understand the role of gravity and dark matter in the structure and expansion of our universe. First, you need to understand three things that make this telescope and its pictures so unique. Firstly, Euclid's ultra-wide lens captures more of the sky at once than any telescope ever has.
It gathers high-resolution light data from billions of galaxies, some as far away as 10 billion light-years away. Compared to ground-based surveys, it has 4 times the resolution and 15 times the sensitivity in the near-infrared. It can also spot objects hundreds of times fainter than the ones Gaia can detect.
In a single observation, Euclid records vast cosmic structures and precise details of individual galaxies. The result? An image that conveys multiple cosmic scales at the same time, bringing home details in a way that makes researchers giddy. Euclid measures subtle distortions in galaxy shapes caused by dark matter's gravitational influence, creating a gravitational lensing map.
This is key to understanding how galaxy clusters grow and evolve, while also showing us how dark matter has played a role in literally shaping the universe. And finally, Euclid is creating a 3D map of the universe with two advanced instruments.
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Chapter 6: What role does the Euclid telescope play in modern astronomy?
In short, Euclid is kind of a big deal. The hype in the astronomical community around these images is real, as summed up by one Euclid project scientist. We have never seen astronomical images like this before, containing so much detail. They are even more beautiful and sharp than we could have hoped for, showing us many previously unseen features in well-known areas of the nearby universe.
So, let me take you on a tour through Euclid's first light images one by one, starting with our map. Thanks to ESA's Gaia and Planck missions, we already have a pretty solid map of our Milky Way. Euclid is tasked with gathering data on the dark parts of the map. So far, it has covered about 1% of the map it was sent to create.
Between the 25th of March and the 8th of April 2024, Euclid took 260 pictures of the southern sky, covering an area 500 times the size of the full moon we see from Earth. Putting these images together, scientists created a mosaic spanning millions of stars and galaxies. And remember, this is just 1% of what it's planning to do.
Because Euclid captures both big picture and detailed data at the same time, researchers can see the sky at different scales. From extragalactic views, we can zoom into the galaxy clusters, their core, and even individual galaxies. So, let's explore some of these cosmic structures, starting with one of the biggest known in the universe.
This is the Perseus Cluster, located 240 million light years from Earth. This image shows over 1,000 Perseus Cluster galaxies, and more than 100,000 far away galaxies in the background. Scientists think the way galaxies are organized can tell us a lot about the distribution of dark matter and dark energy. You see, gravity might cause dark matter to organize itself into filaments.
We aren't sure, but NASA scientists believe it's possible that where these filaments intersect, galaxies stick closer together, forming a cluster. The theory goes that if there were no dark matter, galaxies would be distributed evenly throughout the universe, which obviously isn't the case.
While many galaxies in the Perseus Cluster are already known, cosmological simulations predict there should be several dwarf galaxies there too. If we could see those faint galaxies, we could analyze their shape and distortion relative to the cluster and background to determine how dark matter is distributed.
The problem is, these dwarf galaxies tend to be overshadowed by all the stars shining infrared light, so they've evaded direct observation. Until now, Euclid discovered more than 630 previously unknown dwarf galaxies, which is a huge breakthrough in the study of dark matter. More than dark matter, Euclid is also teaching us about star formation too.
Let's go to our next destination, and I'll show you. Say hello to irregular galaxy NGC 6822, shining bright 1.6 million light years away. It was first identified as a remote stellar system by Edwin Hubble in 1925. Now, almost 100 years later, Euclid is sending back high resolution images of the entire galaxy and its surroundings.
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Chapter 7: How did the Harlan J. Smith telescope survive a shooting incident?
Scientists are interested in Euclid's wide-angle photos of this galaxy for what they might tell us about star formation and the early universe. You see, stars smash lighter atoms like hydrogen and helium together to produce heavier atoms, including metals.
This process happens across a star's lifespan, and it's why we don't see many heavier elements in the early universe, because they take time to accumulate. Surprisingly, many of the stars in NGC 6822 have very low levels of metal atoms. By studying low metallicity galaxies like this one, scientists hope to learn more about how galaxies evolved in the early universe.
Euclid has made that a monumentally easier task thanks to the colour information from his NISP instrument and its wide field of view. Euclid has also revealed several previously unknown globular star clusters and H2 regions in this galaxy. H2 regions are the colourful gas clouds we see here.
When stars are born, they emit light so strong and bright that it ionises the hydrogen gas surrounding them, resulting in these H2 regions. Studying these will help us better understand the cloud properties at the time a star is born, and what conditions are needed for massive star formation. Speaking of globular clusters, here's one in a different part of the sky.
Globular cluster NGC 6397 is 7,800 light-years from home, making it the second closest one to us. This image is one part of a wider image from Euclid, which I'll show you in a little bit. Globular clusters are kind of like Hollywood, a high concentration of stars in one place, where everyone is trying to outshine everyone else. What does this mean?
The smaller, dimmer stars get drowned out by the bigger, brighter ones. On top of that, they extend quite a long way out from their centre, with the radial parts mainly made up of low-mass faint stars that, until now, have been hard to see. Ironically, it is these faint stars that hold the most scientific interest for unlocking the history of the Milky Way.
As David Massadri of the National Institute for Astrophysics in Italy puts it, currently no other telescope than Euclid can observe the entire globular cluster and at the same time distinguish its faint stellar members in the outer regions from other cosmic sources.
Hubble actually imaged the centre of this cluster in 2021, but to image the entire cluster, including the sprawling outskirts like Euclid did, would have taken it far too much time and resources. On the other hand, Euclid snapped this shot in just one hour, and it is absolutely beautiful, both aesthetically and scientifically.
Sometimes we see stars arranged like this, and sometimes we see them arranged as spiral galaxies. Yet, despite living in one, we don't actually know how they maintain their shape. The next Euclid pictures aim to help answer those questions. Caldwell 5, also known as the Hidden Galaxy, is hard to observe because it lies in the busy disk of our Milky Way, about 11 million light years away.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from the challenges faced by astronomical observatories?
The Euclid image might look normal, as if every telescope can make such an image, but that is not true. What's so special here is that we have a wide view covering the entire galaxy, but we can also zoom in to distinguish individual stars and star clusters.
We can trace the history of star formation and better understand how stars formed and evolved over the lifetime of the galaxy, says Euclid consortium scientist Leslie Hunt. We still don't fully understand how spiral galaxies maintain their structure or the role dark matter plays in forming them.
Euclid's ability to capture this galaxy's sprawling spiral arms and dust lanes in such detail will help scientists understand the link between dust, gas and star formation on a large scale in a way we've never been able to before. Sadly, we've only got one more stop on this cosmic tour. but I've saved you the best for last. Let's see what these colourful clouds are hiding.
Our fifth and final photo shows the Horsehead Nebula. It has been photographed by various telescopes before, but never with such a sharp and wide view as Euclid managed. Again, this shot was taken in just one hour, which is absolutely mind-blowing. It's like someone just stopped at a viewpoint and snapped the picture.
Located approximately 1,375 light-years away, this is the nearest massive star-forming region. It lies just south of Alnitak, the easternmost star in Orion's three-star belt, and is part of the expansive Orion molecular cloud. It is in this swirling nebula that scientists hope to find evidence of many previously unknown Jupiter mass planets.
One such planet has already been identified, Sori 62, a young planet 10 times the mass of Jupiter and a temperature of 1,200 degrees Celsius. The clouds behind the Horsehead Nebula are illuminated by UV radiation from nearby star Sigma Orionis, while the clouds of the Horsehead Nebula itself are made up of cold molecular hydrogen, which gives off barely any heat or light.
This makes the Horsehead Nebula an interesting place to learn more about star formation, as scientists can observe and compare how stars form in dark versus bright clouds. Sigma Orionis is part of a group of stars called an open cluster, which researchers hope to get a more complete picture of with Euclid's data.
For example, three floating planets have been known to exist in Sigma Orionis, but with Euclid's ultra-high sensitivity, scientists found many smaller FFPs than were previously documented. As one research paper put it, FFPs in that zone appear to be ubiquitous and numerous. And this is just the beginning.
With another five and a half years of mission time left, Euclid still has a lot of ground to cover. Along the way, the data and images it collects will be pivotal to helping scientists unravel the mysteries of dark matter, dark energy, and the origins of stars, galaxies, and the universe itself.
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