The world’s most powerful digital camera has captured stunning views of star-forming regions in the Milky Way and a distant galaxy cluster located hundreds of millions of light years from Earth.
It is just a sneak peek of what this powerful US-funded observatory in Chile is capable of. The telescope is expected to solve a number of cosmic mysteries, ranging from the origins of dark matter that makes up most of the universe to the existence of the ninth planet in the Solar System.
One of the images captured by the Vera Rubin telescope shows Trifid and Lagoon nebulae – vivid pink star nurseries 9,000 light years away from Earth. While photographed by amateur and professional astronomers many times before, these star-forming regions in the Constellation Sagittarius have never been captured in such detail.
It is a composite of 678 pictures taken over just seven hours, showcasing the telescope’s unprecedented ability to pierce deep into the universe. The Vera Rubin Observatory is capable of collecting star data from 1.2 million light years away, far beyond the current limit of about 163,000 light years.
Introducing...your sneak peek at the cosmos captured by @NSF–@doescience Vera C. Rubin Observatory!
undefined NSF-DOE Rubin Observatory (@VRubinObs) June 23, 2025
Can you guess what regions of sky they are?
This is just a peek...join us at 11am US EDT for your full First Look at how Rubin will #CaptureTheCosmos!https://t.co/1a74X2edp8 pic.twitter.com/DE3tx2RQI4
Another image released by the observatory shows the scene from the Virgo cluster of galaxies, which is 55 million light years away from Earth and is about 100 billion times the size of the Milky Way.
The Rubin Observatory is a joint venture of the US Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. It is located on Cerro Pachón, a dark and dry mountain in northern Chile on the edge of the Atacama Desert. The observatory is named after Vera Rubin, the American astronomer best known for uncovering key evidence of dark matter.
Using the largest camera ever built, the telescope will repeatedly scan the southern sky for 10 years to create “an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time lapse record of our Universe,” according to the observatory’s mission statement.
It will provide the most comprehensive view of the universe, unlike anything astronomers have seen before, with objects discovered in the Solar System alone expected to increase tenfold thanks to Rubin.
If a ninth planet exists in the Solar System, the telescope is expected to find it in its first year. It should also help answer key questions about dark matter, map the Milky Way, and help detect asteroids within striking distance of Earth.
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