This Giant Telescope Will Reveal The Universe in Unbelievable Detail
Clip: Season 52 | 5m 59sVideo has Closed Captions
Go behind the scenes as NOVA visits the Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile.
Equipped with an 8.4-meter mirror and a 3.2-billion-pixel camera—the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy—the Rubin Observatory is poised to revolutionize how we see the cosmos. In just 10 hours of test observations, the telescope detected over 2,100 new asteroids.
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This Giant Telescope Will Reveal The Universe in Unbelievable Detail
Clip: Season 52 | 5m 59sVideo has Closed Captions
Equipped with an 8.4-meter mirror and a 3.2-billion-pixel camera—the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy—the Rubin Observatory is poised to revolutionize how we see the cosmos. In just 10 hours of test observations, the telescope detected over 2,100 new asteroids.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship- [Narrator] These are some of the first images released by the new Vera Rubin Observatory, revealing a slice of the cosmos in more detail than ever before.
Nova was at the observatory in Chile as scientists fired up the entire system for the first time.
We'll show you the very first photo the telescope took in a moment.
But first, what is this thing and why does it have astronomers so excited?
- [Aaron] We call it dark energy, but we really don't know what it is.
- [William] Some people have spent 20 years waiting for this moment.
(people cheering) It's fantastic.
- [Narrator] The Vera Rubin telescope is massive.
It's equipped with an 8.4 meter mirror and Earth's largest digital camera.
- [Aaron] The camera has 3.2 billion pixels.
That is by far the largest digital camera ever built.
The camera has three lenses.
It's the largest lens ever built for astronomy, over five feet across.
- [Narrator] And it's collecting a ton of data quickly.
It is already discovered over 2,100 new asteroids in just 10 hours of test observations.
The telescope will gather more astronomical data in its first year than all the other optical telescopes in history combined.
It will image the entire southern night sky every three to four nights.
- [Aaron] The Rubin Observatory is unique in its capabilities.
We can do things that no other telescope can really do.
Compared to the space telescopes, Hubble or Webb, we see a huge part of the sky in every image, and we are designed to take images fast.
The camera can collect the image in a little over two seconds.
The telescope can move from one place to another in five seconds.
- [Narrator] Over time, researchers will be able to detect new distant objects and see how they change.
By observing them repeatedly and over the course of 10 years, they will put together a movie of the cosmos.
By then, they will have gathered about 60 million billion bytes of imagery.
- [Zeljko] And we anticipate we will have about 40 billion objects, not million, billion with B, in our images.
That will be the first time that astronomers cataloged more objects than there are living people on Earth.
- [Aaron] We'll see every part of the sky almost a thousand times.
That gives us an extra dimension too.
We'll see what changes.
So we'll discover tens of thousands, if not a hundred thousand, exploding stars, supernova.
We'll see millions of variable stars in our own galaxy, the Milky Way.
We'll see millions of asteroids, moving objects in the solar system, and I think we'll also be able to discover objects that change that we don't quite expect.
- [Narrator] These sorts of observations will help astronomers understand some of the biggest mysteries in the cosmos, like dark energy and dark matter, the mysterious stuff that make up most of the universe.
- Here's the galaxy.
- [Narrator] In fact, the telescope is named after famed astronomer, Vera Rubin, who first forced astronomers to confront the idea of dark matter.
Nova was there for the test in spring of 2025 when the team attempted to focus the camera and take the very first images.
But in the first test of the telescope, everything looked like... Cereal?
- [Sandrine] And after that first image, which looks like a bowl of Cheerios that you eat in the morning, we adjusted the optics in our telescope.
- [Narrator] The image appeared to show a series of rings because the telescope optics were not in proper focus.
To fix this, the team had to adjust the distance between the telescope's camera and its massive mirror, shifting the camera ever so slightly.
- [Robert] The question is, do we move it towards the mirror or do we move it away from the mirror?
And theoretically, we know, or else you can just guess and see if it gets better or worse.
- [Victor] Fifty-fifty.
- [Robert] I always go in a positive direction.
Think positively if you don't know any better.
- [Narrator] As the team fine-tuned the telescope systems... (team chattering) - Almost.
- [Narrator] The image became more and more clear.
(team cheering) - [Zeljko] We just acquired the greatest image in the history of astronomy.
Congratulations.
(team cheering) - [Sandrine] It's the first time this camera sees anything coming from the sky.
That was our first image, and it means a lot to me.
It might not be the prettiest image when you think about astronomy.
But to me, it was extremely rewarding and very beautiful.
- [Narrator] In June, 2025, the Rubin Telescope team released the first official images, revealing the Virgo Cluster, the closest collection of galaxies to us, and the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae.
It's just the start of what promises to be a spectacular decade of discovery.
(ethereal music) Thanks for sticking around.
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