You may have seen the recently released ‘first images’ from the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile. The images are stunning and portend a new level of scientific data expanding our knowledge of the Universe. However, what do you know about Vera Rubin?
Vera Rubin was born in 1928 and graduated from Vassar College. Much of her career was filled with battling existing stereotypes of women scientists.
Vera received her Master's degree from Cornell under the direction of Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe, both Nobel laureates in physics. She received a PhD, working for George Gamow. She studied galaxy formation.
In the 1960s, Vera Rubin studied the rotational rate of the Andromeda Galaxy. In 1970, she presented data indicating that, based on the mass, its rotation should tear it apart.
Dr. Rubin theorized that there was additional unseen mass in the galaxies that held them together. This is now known as Dark Matter and is still one of the key mysteries in astrophysics.
Step forward in time to 2025. On June 23, the Vera Rubin Observatory, formerly the Large Survey Synoptic Telescope, released its first look at the night sky. The primary purpose is to generate digital images of the entire southern sky every few nights. The camera for this is the world’s largest digital camera, consisting of three thousand, two hundred megapixels. Over its ten-year planned life, it will capture 60 million gigabytes of data.
The data will catalog 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than 300 m and assess the threat they pose to life on Earth. It will find some 10,000 primitive objects in the Kuiper Belt, which contains a fossil record of the formation of the solar system. It will also contribute to the study of the structure of the universe by observing thousands of supernovae, both nearby and at large redshift, and by measuring the distribution of dark matter through gravitational lensing. The image dataset is so large that specialized ‘AI’ software will be needed to analyze the data fully.
Dr. Rubin passed away in 2016, knowing that the observatory named in her honor would continue her legacy of exploring and understanding the Universe.
We finish with a Vera Rubin quotation that seems fitting, given the capability of the observatory named in her honor.
“There was just nothing as interesting in my life as watching the stars every night.”
Western Slope Skies is produced by the Colorado Mesa University Astronomy Club, the Western Slope Dark Sky Coalition, and KVNF Community Radio. Music written and produced by Kenny Mihelich. This feature was written and voiced by Bryan Cashion.
For more on Dr. Rubin’s life, see HERE