The Vera Rubin Telescope Begins Surveying Our Cosmos (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0184237618
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/07/01/064221/the-vera-rubin-telescope-begins-surveying-our-cosmos
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/science/rubin-telescope.html
> "This is the end of a 30-year wait," said Phil Marshall, the deputy director of the telescope's operations at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, in a statement to The New York Times. "It's a major milestone for us." Astronomers expect this collection of data, known as the [2]Legacy Survey of Space and Time , to revolutionize their knowledge of our galaxy's birth, the invisible matter permeating the cosmos, what shaped the universe into the structure it has today and more. According to Dr. Marshall, the survey is designed to see everything, "even the things we don't know we're looking for yet," he said.
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> The team behind the observatory, a joint effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, [3]unveiled several images of the cosmos that were jampacked with celestial goodness -- a peek at what the Rubin could do -- last year. Since then, scientists have been busy conducting final tests and reviews of the telescope's operations and systems. According to Bob Blum, the director of Rubin operations at the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, the team has also been hard at work ensuring that the telescope can operate reliably in different environmental conditions for the next decade.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/30/science/rubin-telescope.html
[2] https://rubinobservatory.org/explore/how-rubin-works/lsst
[3] https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-gallery
How will its images compare to Hubble? (Score:4, Informative)
Wider field of view, vastly more data (time-lapse survey of entire sky every few nights), but lower angular resolution than Hubble's sharp, targeted deep-space images.
How does it compare to other ground based telescopes?
Largest wide-field survey telescope (8.4m mirror, 3.2 gigapixel camera). Faster and broader than most ground-based (e.g., Subaru, VISTA), but lower resolution than adaptive-optics giants like Keck or ELT.
Re: (Score:2)
It has the great advantage of being above the atmosphere and the lights of earth. That should more than make up for any lower resolution.
Cue Elvis... (Score:1)
"Thank you Vera much."
Virtue signalling cunts (Score:2)
The people who won't call this the "Rubin Space Telescope" are the same cunts who think we should call a man running a meeting a "chair", think the master branch of a git repo can't be called "Master" ( but they can still have a Masters degree ), think female actors are "actors", etc etc etc.
We used to make jokes about absolutely ridiculous Political Correctness.
Then it all came true.
Keep it quiet (Score:5, Insightful)
Please keep it quiet, otherwise the anti-DEI police of the current Administration will force it to close down, and probably douse it in acid, just for the crime of being named for a ( [1]qualified, historic, accomplished [wikipedia.org]) woman.
Or, they'll go after it for the same reason they went after the ocean monitoring system: they don't want people asking questions the Administration doesn't want the answers to. [2]Don't Look Up [imdb.com] was supposed to be a parable, not an instruction manual.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vera_Rubin&oldid=1354366700
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11286314/
Re: Keep it quiet (Score:1)
They'll probably just confuse it with the NVIDIA AI systems of the same name anyway.
Re: (Score:1)
With all the alien hype recenlty, I expected nothing and have yet to be let down at all.
Re: (Score:2)
>> anti-DEI police of the current Administration
> That DEI enforcement group seems to be asleep on the job. The current administration has appointed numerous women* to important positions.
> *Biological women, that is. Sorry about the rest of you guys. I guess you are going to have to do a better job tucking.
Are you sure about that "biological" thing? Most of them look like Stepford Wives.
Re: (Score:2)
> If you think you're not a woke cunt watching the sexist virtue-signalling of other woke cunts, ask yourself when you last referred to the "Edwin Hubble Telescope".
>
> You didn't. No-one does.
>
> Because hateful woke cunts are busy virtue-signalling. Again.
There's a chance you're correct, oh 7-million UID whippersnapper, and I'm just blind to how hateful I am.
How does the James Webb Space Telescope figure into your analysis, then? Is it hateful woke virtue-signaling to include his first name, too?