The largest digital camera ever built has taken its first pictures of the universe. These colourful photos show distant stars, galaxies, and bright space clouds called nebulas. The images were captured by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which sits on a mountain in Chile.
The observatory is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. Over the next 10 years, it will explore the skies above the Southern Hemisphere, helping scientists learn more about space. Its first images include the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas, both located thousands of light-years from Earth. A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, about 9.4 trillion kilometres.
Another picture shows the Virgo Cluster, a group of galaxies, including two bright blue spirals. The camera, one of the most powerful ever made, will try to take pictures of 20 billion galaxies in total.
The observatory is named after Vera Rubin, a scientist who helped uncover clues about dark matter, a mysterious force in the universe. Scientists also hope to use this new camera to learn more about dark energy, another puzzling force in space.
