Earlier this year, Tony Tyson got a sneak preview of the first images taken by the brand-new Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile ' a project he first dreamt up more than 30 years ago. After he and his team had spent months troubleshooting the telescope's hardware and control software, thousands of galaxies came into perfect focus. 'It's one thing to know that everything is working, but it's another thing to see it with your own eyes,' says Tyson. 'When I saw that, I said 'wow'.' From its perch on Cerro Pachon in the Andes, the Rubin observatory will soon use the largest digital camera in the world to begin making a continuous video of the southern sky. Despite weighing some 350 tonnes, the telescope has a compact design that allows it to move nimbly, capturing a different exposure every 40 seconds. It will map the Universe's invisible dark matter in 3D, detect millions of pulsating or exploding stars and spot asteroids that could threaten Earth. Tyson not only conceived the project, but...
learn more
