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Vera C. Rubin Observatory first images

579 points by phsilva 1y ago

keyle 1y ago
Petition to name those two mirrored galaxies "Wax on" and "wax off"? I'll see myself out.
- burstoflight 1y ago
  Took me a while but I got it
phsilva 1y ago
https://skyviewer.app/ https://skyviewer.app/
- spacecadet 1y ago
  We got DOGE instead of using $100k of tax dollars making this into a super nice public mobile app...
  - aragilar 1y ago
    While it would be cool to make a mobile app for this, having used both the tech stack behind this site (it's open source, and really great), and written a mobile app with a similar tech stack, $100k will get you one, but it's going to be a pain to debug all the various niggles around various devices, so you'll need at least double that to make a robust one (and then the question is, do you just go native and reimplement that tech stack).
    - spacecadet 1y ago
      Im not typically this person, but hacker news is just more and more "allow me to tell you", buddy I have 20 years experience building mobile apps... including against scientific, open source, and plain old hack-AF platforms...
      - aragilar 1y ago
        I mean, if you think you can do it for $100k, I would say that it should be possible to apply for (and get) an outreach grant and build it (probably better to try in the EU, given the current cuts to science in the US). Or maybe contact one of the major missions and show a plan of how you'd do it?
NitpickLawyer 1y ago
So stoked for this observatory to go online! One cool uses it'll excel at is taking "deltas" between images and detect moving stuff. Close asteroids is one obvious goal, but I'm more interested in the next Oumuamua / Borisov like objects that come in from interstellar space. It would be amazing to get early warnings about those, and be able to study them with other powerful telescopes we have now.
- avmich 1y ago
  > So stoked for this observatory to go online! Second this, but other areas are of great interest too. Kuiper Belt discoveries and surveys FTW!
jasonthorsness 1y ago
Why are there lens-flare-like artifacts around some of the bright objects?
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  Those are diffraction spikes, caused by how the light interacts with the support structure holding the secondary mirror. Each telescope has different patterns, hubble, jwst, etc. I think they only happen for stars, and not for galaxies (an easy way to know which is which), but I might be wrong on that (there's a possibility for faint stars not to have them IIRC).
  - perihelions 1y ago
    > "Each telescope has different patterns" This one's extra-special! The pattern is multiple + shapes, rotated and superimposed on top of each other. And they're different colors! That's this telescope's signature scanning algorithm—I don't know what that is, but, it's evident it takes multiple exposures, in different color filters, with the image plane rotated differently relative to the CCD plane in each exposure. I assume there's some kind of signal processing rationale behind that choice. edit: Here's one of the bright stars, I think it's HD 107428: https://i.ibb.co/HTmP0rqn/diffraction.webp https://i.ibb.co/HTmP0rqn/diffraction.webp This one has asteroid streaks surrounding it (it's a toggle in one of the hidden menus), which gives a strong clue about the timing of the multiple exposures. The asteroids are going in a straight line at a constant speed—the spacing and colors of the dots shows what the exposure sequence was. I think this quote explains the reason they want to rotate the camera: > "The ranking criteria also ensure that the visits to each field are widely distributed in position angle on the sky and rotation angle of the camera in order to minimize systematic effects in galaxy shape determination." https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2366 https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2366 ("LSST [Vera Rubin]: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products")
    - nullc 1y ago
      > with the image plane rotated differently relative to the CCD plane in each exposure LSST is a alt/az telescope. The earth rotates. The sensor plane must rotate during the exposure to prevent stars from streaking, which it accomplishes via this platform: https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-21544/ https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-... The fact that the sensor rotates without the spider rotating also spreads out the diffraction spikes. But that rotation is limited, so between different exposures with different filters the image plane will be rotated relative to the sky. As the quote goes the change in orientation has benefits for controlling systematics..
perihelions 1y ago
Here's the SDSS view[0] of this featured[1] section from the Virgo Cluster, in comparison, to put the staggering depth of these exposures in their proper context, [0] https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%2053.769%2B08%2057%2039.94&fov=0.40&survey=CDS%2FP%2FSDSS9%2Fcolor https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%205... [1] https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-gallery/32ejonfcf955v6luvhdvbd746c https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-...
- tominspace7 1y ago
  With an opacity slider, for easy comparison: https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS%2FP%2FSDSS9%2Fcolor&overlayImageLayer=https://images.rubinobservatory.org/hips/asteroids/color_ugri&showOpacitySlider&ra=186.648828&dec=9.03525650&fov=0.2 https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS...
  - sega_sai 1y ago
    Thanks for the link, I didn't know one can do this with Aladin Lite! But to be fair, if we compare to DESI LS, it looks much less impressive. I.e. all the shells/tidal debris are basically visible in DESI.
    - tominspace7 1y ago
      Agreed. Here is the link: https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS%2FP%2FDESI-Legacy-Surveys%2FDR10%2Fcolor&overlayImageLayer=https:%2F%2Fimages.rubinobservatory.org%2Fhips%2Fasteroids%2Fcolor_ugri&showOpacitySlider&ra=186.648828&dec=9.03525650&fov=0.2 https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS...
    - binarystargazer 1y ago
      I agree their results are also great! We do go a bit deeper, but he big difference it the speed we are able to build these images. We are able to image a larger area of the sky in each exposure, and are able to collect more light. This will lets us build images like this one in a few hours of observation, and build up an equivalent image of the entire southern hemisphere.
dekhn 1y ago
I really like the Rubin because I think a lot of people focus too much on "deep" seeing (IE, looking at individual or several objects with very high magnification only once). The Rubin does much more "wide" seeing and this actually produces a ton of useful data- basically, enough data to collect reliable statistics about things. This helps refine cosmological models in ways that smaller individual observations cannot. What's amazing to me is just how long it took to get to first photo- I was working on the design of the LSST scope well over 10 years ago, and the project had been underway for some time before that. It's hard to keep attention on projects for that long when a company can IPO and make billions in just a few years.
- cogman10 1y ago
  Deep is still interesting in understanding the origins of the universe. Rubin seems highly practical on the flip side. It'll be a super helpful tool in predicting asteroid impacts.
  - TheBlight 1y ago
    Or detecting more unusual interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua.
  - WD-42 1y ago
    Also microlensing events, supernovae, and many other things in our very dynamic universe.
    - perihelions 1y ago
      Also new planets! Planet Nine should likely be resolved within months, one way or another. > "Probably within the first year we’re going to see if there’s something there or not,” says Pedro Bernardinelli, an astronomer at the University of Washington." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/is-there-a-planet-nine-we-may-find-out-vera-rubin-observatory https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/is-there-...
      - 1y ago
krunck 1y ago
The asteroid detection capability is amazing: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/swarm-asteroids https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/swarm-ast...
- cogman10 1y ago
  This is really going to revolutionize our ability to detect and predict asteroid impact.
  - stronglikedan 1y ago
    And just in the nick of time!
- jstummbillig 1y ago
  That is likely the most unexcitedly unsettling video I have ever seen. Amazing storytelling really.
  - stronglikedan 1y ago
    I was just coming back to comment on the existential dread elicited by that video.
  - semireg 1y ago
    It’s like swimming in a lake or river and thinking the water is just water but then you take a closer look and it’s just incredibly alive to the point of absurdity.
    - steve_adams_86 1y ago
      I suppose the weeds, bugs, bacteria, frogs, fish, and snakes are equally unlikely to harm us, but nonetheless. Holy shit!
- m3kw9 1y ago
  Which also tells the astronomical low odds of asteroids hitting earth even with “so many” of them. To me it changes nothing
dang 1y ago
Related: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-scientists-reveal-telescopes-first-images.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-scient... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44352455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44352455, but no comments there)
syasya3344 1y ago
[flagged]
-warren 1y ago
Counter-rotating spiral galaxies. Super neat! https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.23 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.2...
- japhyr 1y ago
  That is interesting! They look like they're roughly in the same plane. Is it safe to assume they're roughly in the same plane, or could they be really distant along the line of sight? The similarity in size makes me think they are, but I don't have any reason to be confident in that judgment.
  - perihelions 1y ago
    Those are NGC 4411 a+b and they're indeed right next to each other, https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2421b/ https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2421b/ ("thought to be right next to each other — both at a distance of about 50 million light-years")
    - jcims 1y ago
      What's going on directly above with what looks to be 3-4 galaxies interacting?
      - o11c 1y ago
        It says that NGC 4410 is (gravitationally) interacting galaxies. After clicking through the link, it calls it RSCG 55 instead and explains more. I don't understand the naming scheme.
        SiempreViernes 1y ago
        The naming scheme is based on the principle "tens of thousand of people have done this over thousands of years, and they all named things themselves". Its not uncommon for objects to have ~20 separate names[1], with some having over a hundred [2]. In this particular case, RSCG 55 means a group of galaxies[3], of which NGC 4410 is one member. Apparently RSCG is the "Redshift Survey Compact Groups" (https://cds.unistra.fr/cgi-bin/Dic-Simbad?RSCG https://cds.unistra.fr/cgi-bin/Dic-Simbad?RSCG) so 55 is just an index number. That's also the case for the 4410 after NGC; in that case stands for "New General Catalog". In contrast the Sloan Digital Sky Survey gave NGC 4410 the name SDSS J122628.29+090111.4 where the numbers indicates its position in the sky. The "index number" and the "position of the sky" are the two most popular naming strategies. [1] NGC 4410 has 37, but the NGC objects are among the more popular https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=+NGC+4410&NbIdent=1 https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=+NGC+4410&Nb... [2] https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=M87&submit=submit+id https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=M87&submit=s... [3] https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=RSCG+55&NbIdent=1 https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=RSCG+55&NbId...
ramijames 1y ago
I was surprised by how many lensed objects I could spot.
kdamica 1y ago
My God, it's full of stars
- trhway 1y ago
  brings up that old paradox - should any line of sight ultimately end up at a star?
  - Jordan-117 1y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox
    - o11c 1y ago
      Note that it makes a lot of assumptions beyond the stated ones, such as: * the only objects in space are stars * all stars are equally bright * the average brightness is one that can be seen (unless you roll all this into "homogeneous"?)
      - komali2 1y ago
        Yeah I'm confused because couldn't a black hole between us and a star be the reason for a black spot? That times a bajillion for whatever else is out there.
        trhway 1y ago
        gravitational lensing would make the light go around the black hole.
- binarystargazer 1y ago
  Image creator here. Now imagine, when the survey is done, we will be able to see even fainter objects and image an area of the sky 1000x times this size.
WD-42 1y ago
The amount of data this thing will be putting out every night is insane. For years now the community has been building the infrastructure to be able to efficiently consume it for useful science, but we still have work to do. Anyone interested in the problem of pipelining and distributing 10s of TB of data a night should check out the LSST and related GitHubs.
- dekhn 1y ago
  I've followed this project for over a decade and the amount of data they are moving around is fairly routine, given their budget size and access to computing and networking resources. The total storage (~40-50PB) is pretty large, but moving 10TB around the world isn't special engineering at this point.
  - WD-42 1y ago
    It's not about the size of the data in bytes, it's also the amount of changes that need to be detected and alerts that need to be sent out (estimated at millions a night). Keep in mind the downstream consumers of this data are mostly small scientific outfits with extremely limited software engineering budgets.
    - dekhn 1y ago
      Again, nothing special. The small outfits aren't going to be doing the critical processing.
      - WD-42 1y ago
        …they do the science
        dekhn 1y ago
        I've worked on quite a few large-scale scientific collaborations like this (and also worked on/talked to the lead scientists of LSST) and typically, the end groups that do science aren't the ones handling the massive infrastructure. That typically goes to well-funded sites with great infrastructure who then provide straightforward ways for the smaller science groups to operate on the bits of data they care about. Here's the canonical example: https://home.cern/science/computing/grid https://home.cern/science/computing/grid and a lab that didn't have enough horsepower using a different grid: https://osg-htc.org/spotlights/new-frontiers-at-thyme-lab.html https://osg-htc.org/spotlights/new-frontiers-at-thyme-lab.ht... Personally, I have pointed the grid folks (I used to work on grid) towards cloud, and many projects like this have a tier 1 in the cloud. The data lives in S3, metadata in some database, and use cloud provider's notification system. The scientists work in adjacent AWS accounts that have access to those systems and can move data pretty quickly.
runako 1y ago
Every set of deep field imagery reminds me that any point of light we see could be a star, a galaxy, or a cluster of galaxies. The universe is unimaginably vast. For observatories like Rubin, is there a plan for keeping them open after the funding ends? Is it feasible for Chile to take over the project and keep it going? On a practical note, what happens to a facility like this if one day it's just locked up? Will it degrade without routine maintenance, or will it still be operational in the event someone can put together funding?
- prpl 1y ago
  It will continue with a new instrument after 10 years (spectroscopic) funding permitting. Tololo has been running since the 60s. In California, Lick has been running since the 1880s.
  - runako 1y ago
    I get that it will run for a long time as long as someone is maintaining it. I am wondering what will happen if the doors are locked and the power is cut for an extended period of time (5+ years), as seems like a very real possibility unless an alternate source of funding can be found.
    - prpl 1y ago
      That won’t happen for this telescope. It has so many unique capabilities that other telescopes would be shuttered first.
- aragilar 1y ago
  There are already facilities like this (obviously not as new as Rubin) degrading due to funding, but this is because there's usually no better purpose for them. Space monitoring has been used in the past as a second life for facilities (outreach too), but ~1m class telescopes are good enough now that networks of them are better than a 40+ year old telescope. It's also worth noting bits can be reused: buildings gutted and repurposed, telescopes/instruments moved/sold on, etc.; but the real issue is having the staff to look after these places, and many older facilities are not always as amenable to automation as people might like (especially funding agencies). Arecibo was about 60 years old for comparison when it collapsed, but there are lots of faculties that are effectively ships of Theseus, with new instruments coming in over time which refresh the faculty (and when that stops happening, then you get concerned).
w10-1 1y ago
The zoomed images look grainy as one would expect from raw data, but I would have expected them to do dark field subtraction for the chips to minimize this effect. Does anyone know if that's done (or expressly avoided) in this context, or why it might not be as helpful (e.g., for longer exposures)?
- jcims 1y ago
  Seems this will be done on the 'nightly' release cadence. Found on page 11 in this doc that I found from the wikipedia page: https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/LSE-163/LSE-163_DataProductsDefinitionDocumentDPDD.pdf https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/LSE-163/L...
- binarystargazer 1y ago
  Image creator here. We do dark field subtraction, as well as many other instrumental calibrations. What you are seeing is the fundamental photon noise. Because it is statistical in nature, you can never completely eliminate it. We could have chosen to put the black point in the image at a much higher flux level, but if you go to a high enough signal to noise level that you see no grain anywhere, you would miss out on so many interesting things that are still quite obvious to make out but are only 2-3 sigma above the noise.
mapt 1y ago
Even one zoom-in and I find something interesting. What's that faint illuminated tendril extending from M61 (the large spiral galaxy at the bottom center of the image) upwards towards that red giant? It seems too straight and off-center to be an extension of the spiral arm. EDIT: The supposed "Tidal tail" on M61 was evidently known from deep astrophotography, but only rarely detected & commented upon.
ludsan 1y ago
something green: https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.03 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.0...
- prpl 1y ago
  might be bad cosmic ray rejection during green exposure
- watersb 1y ago
  Could be a satellite that moved into the frame during green. There was a livestream presentation and press conference up on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/live/Zv22_Amsreo?si=zQLeGfJokZoCPkji https://www.youtube.com/live/Zv22_Amsreo?si=zQLeGfJokZoCPkji At time 1:38:19 - one hour 38 minutes 19 seconds - into the livestream presentation, there's a slide that shows RGB streaks of fast-moving objects that were removed for the final image. Those streaks are apparently asteroids. Perhaps it is indeed a glitch or cosmic ray event. (Is there a better URL for the slide deck?)
- dogben 1y ago
  something red https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.03 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.0...
  - dogben 1y ago
    fixed link: https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=187.04483+7.00898&fov=0.22 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=187.04483+7.00898&fov=0.2...
- binarystargazer 1y ago
  Image creator here. This is such a massive dataset, most of the image processing needed to be custom written software pipelines. It not really practical for every pixel to be hand inspected. A few defects (and bright asteroids) imprinted through. It really hard to decide what is a real weird thing in the universe, and what is some sort of instrumental effect. We try to not pre-decide on what we think we should be seeing and filter for those by using things such as using classifiers. That leaves us with heuristics based on temporal information, size (is it smaller than a point spread function), and other related things. On large numbers of objects and pixels 1 in a thousand or 1 in a million outliers are bound to occur.
botswana99 1y ago
Jesus H Christ, the Universe is big.
- xoxxala 1y ago
  “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” -Douglas Adams
  - OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago
    [dead]
- anjel 1y ago
  Sometimes I feel like a diatom floiting in the ocean
  - ahazred8ta 1y ago
    Yeah, but there's an old saying: "The ocean is small; ports are big."
jcims 1y ago
The wikipedia article is quite good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory (Edit: Treasure trove of details in the references if any of your interests are adjacent to this) The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale. Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is). This is an interesting tidbit: > Once images are taken, they are processed according to three different timescales, prompt (within 60 seconds), daily, and annually. > The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself. This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out. They are estimating 10 million alerts per night, which will be released publicly after the previously mentioned assessment takes place.
- robotnikman 1y ago
  >The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself.[64] >This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out. Interesting, I'm guessing secret spy satellites?
  - kkylin 1y ago
    "Let's look for spy satellites / orbiters" was an "application" I wondered about. My second thought about this was: maybe the US (and possibly other countries) already have something like this, but classified?
    - dekhn 1y ago
OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago
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royal__ 1y ago
"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."
mjsweet 1y ago
Back in January 2010 I went on a blind date with a lady who’s now my wife — an astrophysicist. We talked about this instrument and how Google would shuffle petabytes of raw observations, then distilling them into datasets researchers could actually use (don't know if Google is still involved?). We’ll celebrate 15 years of marriage this January, and I have been following the progress of this telescope since 2007 or so. It's amazing how long it takes for these instruments to come online, but the benefits are significant.
- jcims 1y ago
  > We’ll celebrate 15 years of marriage this January, Congrats!
stefantalpalaru 1y ago
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AStonesThrow 1y ago
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throw0101c 1y ago
PetaPixel has a decent article / video on the topic from a visit to the observatory: * https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/hands-on-at-the-vera-c-rubin-observatory-and-its-first-enormous-5-gigapixel-image/ https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/hands-on-at-the-vera-c-rubi... Not super technical, but a little higher level (with decent analogies to photography, for their traditional audience).
- adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
  I really like that they mentioned how the telescope will be sub-optimal for wedding photography
Helmut10001 1y ago
Check out this video: https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-gallery/5iqj02kcs14lt24j845a58n15p https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-... Incredible.
- 0x0203 1y ago
  For anyone that hasn't clicked the link, it shows that in just a few days, the observatory has already found over 2000 new asteroids. That is indeed very impressive.
  - KurSix 1y ago
    Imagine what it'll be turning up once the full survey is underway
nvk255 1y ago
For a step by step tour: https://skyviewer.app/tours/cosmic-treasure-chest/ https://skyviewer.app/tours/cosmic-treasure-chest/
gattr 1y ago
Related: When a Telescope Is a National-Security Risk [1]; TL;DR: VCRO is capable of imaging spy- and other classified US satellites. An automated filtering system (involves routing through some government processing facility) is in place to remove them from the freshly captured raw data used for the public transient phenomena alert service. 3 days later, unredacted data is made available (by then the elusive, variable-orbit assets are long gone.) [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/vera-rubin-telescope-spy-satellite/680814/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/vera-rub...
funkypants 1y ago
What is this? https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=183.65537+6.09434&fov=0.08 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=183.65537+6.09434&fov=0.0...
- spacecadet 1y ago
  Looks like two galaxies interacting/merging.
0x0203 1y ago
Why do the brighter objects have the four way cross artifact? My (apparently incorrect) understanding was that those types of artifacts were a result of support structures holding reflecting mirrors on a telescope. But this camera just has a "standard" glass lense with nothing obstructing the light path to the sensor.
- frontfor 1y ago
  It’s a reflecting telescope, not a camera with a glass lens.
  - 0x0203 1y ago
    Ah, thanks. I had seen a bunch of hype about the camera itself (which is on its own very impressive) and assumed that was the complete device. Didn't realize it was part of a larger telescope.
- binarystargazer 1y ago
  You are not wholly wrong! There is both a supporting structure for the mirror, AND a glass lens in front of the sensor to further flatten the incoming light. The interesting thing about the spikes in our images is that they stay fixed in image plane coordinates, not sky coordinates. So as the night sky moves (earth rotates) the spikes rotate relative to the sky leading to a star burst pattern over multiple exposures.
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  Those diffraction spikes are caused by the four-vane spider structure supporting the secondary mirror in the telescope's optical path, not by the camera lenses themselves.
KurSix 1y ago
The potential for discoveries here seems enormous
binarystargazer 1y ago
I'm the Rubin team member responsible for mapping the data into RGB images. I have been a long time reader of hacker news, but finally made an account to comment on this. I wanted to thank everyone here for their interest and taking their time to check out these images. Seeing everyone interested and engaged makes all the long hours worth it.
- phkahler 1y ago
  What range of wavelengths are in the original images? Do you produce multiple RGB images for looking at different things? c'mon, what does that entail? ;-)
  - binarystargazer 1y ago
    The filters used for this range from near infrared to near uv. We used 4 different filters in all (for this image, the telescope has more). In general yes to fully appreciate all the color information as a human we need to generate different color combos so our eyes can pick up different contrasts. However, what we strive for is being accurate to "if your eyes COULD see like this, it would look like this". To the best our our ability of course. We did a lot of research into human perception to create this and tired to map the information of color and intensity in a similar way to how your brain constructs that information into an image. Let me tell you, I did not appreciate how deep a topic this was before starting, and how limited our file formats and electronic reproduction capabilities are for this. The data has such a range of information (in color and intensity) it is hard to encode into existing formats that most people are able to display. I really want to spend some time to do this in modern HDR (true HDR, not tone-mapping) where the brightness can actually be encoded separately than just RGB values. The documentation on these (several competing) formats is a bit all over the place though. Edit: I wanted to edit to add, if anyone reading this is an expert in HDR formats and or processing, I'd live to pick your brain a bit!
    - feoren 1y ago
      I'm impressed so much thought went into how to colorize the image! Sometimes it seems like space photos are just colorized thoughtlessly, or to increase the "wow" factor, so it's great to hear how careful and thoughtful you guys were in mapping this data to color-space.
matiascoin 1y ago
Amazing

579 points by phsilva 1y ago

keyle 1y ago

Petition to name those two mirrored galaxies "Wax on" and "wax off"? I'll see myself out.

burstoflight 1y ago
Took me a while but I got it

phsilva 1y ago

https://skyviewer.app/ https://skyviewer.app/

spacecadet 1y ago
We got DOGE instead of using $100k of tax dollars making this into a super nice public mobile app...
- aragilar 1y ago
  While it would be cool to make a mobile app for this, having used both the tech stack behind this site (it's open source, and really great), and written a mobile app with a similar tech stack, $100k will get you one, but it's going to be a pain to debug all the various niggles around various devices, so you'll need at least double that to make a robust one (and then the question is, do you just go native and reimplement that tech stack).
  - spacecadet 1y ago
    Im not typically this person, but hacker news is just more and more "allow me to tell you", buddy I have 20 years experience building mobile apps... including against scientific, open source, and plain old hack-AF platforms...
    - aragilar 1y ago
      I mean, if you think you can do it for $100k, I would say that it should be possible to apply for (and get) an outreach grant and build it (probably better to try in the EU, given the current cuts to science in the US). Or maybe contact one of the major missions and show a plan of how you'd do it?

NitpickLawyer 1y ago

So stoked for this observatory to go online! One cool uses it'll excel at is taking "deltas" between images and detect moving stuff. Close asteroids is one obvious goal, but I'm more interested in the next Oumuamua / Borisov like objects that come in from interstellar space. It would be amazing to get early warnings about those, and be able to study them with other powerful telescopes we have now.

avmich 1y ago
> So stoked for this observatory to go online! Second this, but other areas are of great interest too. Kuiper Belt discoveries and surveys FTW!

jasonthorsness 1y ago

Why are there lens-flare-like artifacts around some of the bright objects?

NitpickLawyer 1y ago
Those are diffraction spikes, caused by how the light interacts with the support structure holding the secondary mirror. Each telescope has different patterns, hubble, jwst, etc. I think they only happen for stars, and not for galaxies (an easy way to know which is which), but I might be wrong on that (there's a possibility for faint stars not to have them IIRC).
- perihelions 1y ago
  > "Each telescope has different patterns" This one's extra-special! The pattern is multiple + shapes, rotated and superimposed on top of each other. And they're different colors! That's this telescope's signature scanning algorithm—I don't know what that is, but, it's evident it takes multiple exposures, in different color filters, with the image plane rotated differently relative to the CCD plane in each exposure. I assume there's some kind of signal processing rationale behind that choice. edit: Here's one of the bright stars, I think it's HD 107428: https://i.ibb.co/HTmP0rqn/diffraction.webp https://i.ibb.co/HTmP0rqn/diffraction.webp This one has asteroid streaks surrounding it (it's a toggle in one of the hidden menus), which gives a strong clue about the timing of the multiple exposures. The asteroids are going in a straight line at a constant speed—the spacing and colors of the dots shows what the exposure sequence was. I think this quote explains the reason they want to rotate the camera: > "The ranking criteria also ensure that the visits to each field are widely distributed in position angle on the sky and rotation angle of the camera in order to minimize systematic effects in galaxy shape determination." https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2366 https://arxiv.org/abs/0805.2366 ("LSST [Vera Rubin]: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products")
  - nullc 1y ago
    > with the image plane rotated differently relative to the CCD plane in each exposure LSST is a alt/az telescope. The earth rotates. The sensor plane must rotate during the exposure to prevent stars from streaking, which it accomplishes via this platform: https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-21544/ https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-... The fact that the sensor rotates without the spider rotating also spreads out the diffraction spikes. But that rotation is limited, so between different exposures with different filters the image plane will be rotated relative to the sky. As the quote goes the change in orientation has benefits for controlling systematics..

perihelions 1y ago

Here's the SDSS view[0] of this featured[1] section from the Virgo Cluster, in comparison, to put the staggering depth of these exposures in their proper context, [0] https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%2053.769%2B08%2057%2039.94&fov=0.40&survey=CDS%2FP%2FSDSS9%2Fcolor https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?target=12%2026%205... [1] https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-gallery/32ejonfcf955v6luvhdvbd746c https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-...

tominspace7 1y ago
With an opacity slider, for easy comparison: https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS%2FP%2FSDSS9%2Fcolor&overlayImageLayer=https://images.rubinobservatory.org/hips/asteroids/color_ugri&showOpacitySlider&ra=186.648828&dec=9.03525650&fov=0.2 https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS...
- sega_sai 1y ago
  Thanks for the link, I didn't know one can do this with Aladin Lite! But to be fair, if we compare to DESI LS, it looks much less impressive. I.e. all the shells/tidal debris are basically visible in DESI.
  - tominspace7 1y ago
    Agreed. Here is the link: https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS%2FP%2FDESI-Legacy-Surveys%2FDR10%2Fcolor&overlayImageLayer=https:%2F%2Fimages.rubinobservatory.org%2Fhips%2Fasteroids%2Fcolor_ugri&showOpacitySlider&ra=186.648828&dec=9.03525650&fov=0.2 https://aladin.cds.unistra.fr/AladinLite/?baseImageLayer=CDS...
  - binarystargazer 1y ago
    I agree their results are also great! We do go a bit deeper, but he big difference it the speed we are able to build these images. We are able to image a larger area of the sky in each exposure, and are able to collect more light. This will lets us build images like this one in a few hours of observation, and build up an equivalent image of the entire southern hemisphere.

dekhn 1y ago

I really like the Rubin because I think a lot of people focus too much on "deep" seeing (IE, looking at individual or several objects with very high magnification only once). The Rubin does much more "wide" seeing and this actually produces a ton of useful data- basically, enough data to collect reliable statistics about things. This helps refine cosmological models in ways that smaller individual observations cannot. What's amazing to me is just how long it took to get to first photo- I was working on the design of the LSST scope well over 10 years ago, and the project had been underway for some time before that. It's hard to keep attention on projects for that long when a company can IPO and make billions in just a few years.

cogman10 1y ago
Deep is still interesting in understanding the origins of the universe. Rubin seems highly practical on the flip side. It'll be a super helpful tool in predicting asteroid impacts.
- TheBlight 1y ago
  Or detecting more unusual interstellar objects like 'Oumuamua.
- WD-42 1y ago
  Also microlensing events, supernovae, and many other things in our very dynamic universe.
  - perihelions 1y ago
    Also new planets! Planet Nine should likely be resolved within months, one way or another. > "Probably within the first year we’re going to see if there’s something there or not,” says Pedro Bernardinelli, an astronomer at the University of Washington." https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/is-there-a-planet-nine-we-may-find-out-vera-rubin-observatory https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/is-there-...
    - 1y ago

krunck 1y ago

The asteroid detection capability is amazing: https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/swarm-asteroids https://rubinobservatory.org/news/rubin-first-look/swarm-ast...

cogman10 1y ago
This is really going to revolutionize our ability to detect and predict asteroid impact.
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  And just in the nick of time!
jstummbillig 1y ago
That is likely the most unexcitedly unsettling video I have ever seen. Amazing storytelling really.
- stronglikedan 1y ago
  I was just coming back to comment on the existential dread elicited by that video.
- semireg 1y ago
  It’s like swimming in a lake or river and thinking the water is just water but then you take a closer look and it’s just incredibly alive to the point of absurdity.
  - steve_adams_86 1y ago
    I suppose the weeds, bugs, bacteria, frogs, fish, and snakes are equally unlikely to harm us, but nonetheless. Holy shit!
m3kw9 1y ago
Which also tells the astronomical low odds of asteroids hitting earth even with “so many” of them. To me it changes nothing

dang 1y ago

Related: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-scientists-reveal-telescopes-first-images.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/23/science/vera-rubin-scient... (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44352455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44352455, but no comments there)

syasya3344 1y ago

[flagged]

-warren 1y ago

Counter-rotating spiral galaxies. Super neat! https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.23 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.66721+8.89072&fov=0.2...

japhyr 1y ago
That is interesting! They look like they're roughly in the same plane. Is it safe to assume they're roughly in the same plane, or could they be really distant along the line of sight? The similarity in size makes me think they are, but I don't have any reason to be confident in that judgment.
- perihelions 1y ago
  Those are NGC 4411 a+b and they're indeed right next to each other, https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2421b/ https://noirlab.edu/public/images/iotw2421b/ ("thought to be right next to each other — both at a distance of about 50 million light-years")
  - jcims 1y ago
    What's going on directly above with what looks to be 3-4 galaxies interacting?
    - o11c 1y ago
      It says that NGC 4410 is (gravitationally) interacting galaxies. After clicking through the link, it calls it RSCG 55 instead and explains more. I don't understand the naming scheme.
      - SiempreViernes 1y ago
        The naming scheme is based on the principle "tens of thousand of people have done this over thousands of years, and they all named things themselves". Its not uncommon for objects to have ~20 separate names[1], with some having over a hundred [2]. In this particular case, RSCG 55 means a group of galaxies[3], of which NGC 4410 is one member. Apparently RSCG is the "Redshift Survey Compact Groups" (https://cds.unistra.fr/cgi-bin/Dic-Simbad?RSCG https://cds.unistra.fr/cgi-bin/Dic-Simbad?RSCG) so 55 is just an index number. That's also the case for the 4410 after NGC; in that case stands for "New General Catalog". In contrast the Sloan Digital Sky Survey gave NGC 4410 the name SDSS J122628.29+090111.4 where the numbers indicates its position in the sky. The "index number" and the "position of the sky" are the two most popular naming strategies. [1] NGC 4410 has 37, but the NGC objects are among the more popular https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=+NGC+4410&NbIdent=1 https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=+NGC+4410&Nb... [2] https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=M87&submit=submit+id https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=M87&submit=s... [3] https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=RSCG+55&NbIdent=1 https://simbad.u-strasbg.fr/simbad/sim-id?Ident=RSCG+55&NbId...

ramijames 1y ago

I was surprised by how many lensed objects I could spot.

kdamica 1y ago

My God, it's full of stars

trhway 1y ago
brings up that old paradox - should any line of sight ultimately end up at a star?
- Jordan-117 1y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers%27s_paradox
  - o11c 1y ago
    Note that it makes a lot of assumptions beyond the stated ones, such as: * the only objects in space are stars * all stars are equally bright * the average brightness is one that can be seen (unless you roll all this into "homogeneous"?)
    - komali2 1y ago
      Yeah I'm confused because couldn't a black hole between us and a star be the reason for a black spot? That times a bajillion for whatever else is out there.
      - trhway 1y ago
        gravitational lensing would make the light go around the black hole.
binarystargazer 1y ago
Image creator here. Now imagine, when the survey is done, we will be able to see even fainter objects and image an area of the sky 1000x times this size.

WD-42 1y ago

The amount of data this thing will be putting out every night is insane. For years now the community has been building the infrastructure to be able to efficiently consume it for useful science, but we still have work to do. Anyone interested in the problem of pipelining and distributing 10s of TB of data a night should check out the LSST and related GitHubs.

dekhn 1y ago
I've followed this project for over a decade and the amount of data they are moving around is fairly routine, given their budget size and access to computing and networking resources. The total storage (~40-50PB) is pretty large, but moving 10TB around the world isn't special engineering at this point.
- WD-42 1y ago
  It's not about the size of the data in bytes, it's also the amount of changes that need to be detected and alerts that need to be sent out (estimated at millions a night). Keep in mind the downstream consumers of this data are mostly small scientific outfits with extremely limited software engineering budgets.
  - dekhn 1y ago
    Again, nothing special. The small outfits aren't going to be doing the critical processing.
    - WD-42 1y ago
      …they do the science
      - dekhn 1y ago
        I've worked on quite a few large-scale scientific collaborations like this (and also worked on/talked to the lead scientists of LSST) and typically, the end groups that do science aren't the ones handling the massive infrastructure. That typically goes to well-funded sites with great infrastructure who then provide straightforward ways for the smaller science groups to operate on the bits of data they care about. Here's the canonical example: https://home.cern/science/computing/grid https://home.cern/science/computing/grid and a lab that didn't have enough horsepower using a different grid: https://osg-htc.org/spotlights/new-frontiers-at-thyme-lab.html https://osg-htc.org/spotlights/new-frontiers-at-thyme-lab.ht... Personally, I have pointed the grid folks (I used to work on grid) towards cloud, and many projects like this have a tier 1 in the cloud. The data lives in S3, metadata in some database, and use cloud provider's notification system. The scientists work in adjacent AWS accounts that have access to those systems and can move data pretty quickly.

runako 1y ago

Every set of deep field imagery reminds me that any point of light we see could be a star, a galaxy, or a cluster of galaxies. The universe is unimaginably vast. For observatories like Rubin, is there a plan for keeping them open after the funding ends? Is it feasible for Chile to take over the project and keep it going? On a practical note, what happens to a facility like this if one day it's just locked up? Will it degrade without routine maintenance, or will it still be operational in the event someone can put together funding?

prpl 1y ago
It will continue with a new instrument after 10 years (spectroscopic) funding permitting. Tololo has been running since the 60s. In California, Lick has been running since the 1880s.
- runako 1y ago
  I get that it will run for a long time as long as someone is maintaining it. I am wondering what will happen if the doors are locked and the power is cut for an extended period of time (5+ years), as seems like a very real possibility unless an alternate source of funding can be found.
  - prpl 1y ago
    That won’t happen for this telescope. It has so many unique capabilities that other telescopes would be shuttered first.
aragilar 1y ago
There are already facilities like this (obviously not as new as Rubin) degrading due to funding, but this is because there's usually no better purpose for them. Space monitoring has been used in the past as a second life for facilities (outreach too), but ~1m class telescopes are good enough now that networks of them are better than a 40+ year old telescope. It's also worth noting bits can be reused: buildings gutted and repurposed, telescopes/instruments moved/sold on, etc.; but the real issue is having the staff to look after these places, and many older facilities are not always as amenable to automation as people might like (especially funding agencies). Arecibo was about 60 years old for comparison when it collapsed, but there are lots of faculties that are effectively ships of Theseus, with new instruments coming in over time which refresh the faculty (and when that stops happening, then you get concerned).

w10-1 1y ago

The zoomed images look grainy as one would expect from raw data, but I would have expected them to do dark field subtraction for the chips to minimize this effect. Does anyone know if that's done (or expressly avoided) in this context, or why it might not be as helpful (e.g., for longer exposures)?

jcims 1y ago
Seems this will be done on the 'nightly' release cadence. Found on page 11 in this doc that I found from the wikipedia page: https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/LSE-163/LSE-163_DataProductsDefinitionDocumentDPDD.pdf https://docushare.lsstcorp.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/LSE-163/L...
binarystargazer 1y ago
Image creator here. We do dark field subtraction, as well as many other instrumental calibrations. What you are seeing is the fundamental photon noise. Because it is statistical in nature, you can never completely eliminate it. We could have chosen to put the black point in the image at a much higher flux level, but if you go to a high enough signal to noise level that you see no grain anywhere, you would miss out on so many interesting things that are still quite obvious to make out but are only 2-3 sigma above the noise.

mapt 1y ago

Even one zoom-in and I find something interesting. What's that faint illuminated tendril extending from M61 (the large spiral galaxy at the bottom center of the image) upwards towards that red giant? It seems too straight and off-center to be an extension of the spiral arm. EDIT: The supposed "Tidal tail" on M61 was evidently known from deep astrophotography, but only rarely detected & commented upon.

ludsan 1y ago

something green: https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.03 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.0...

prpl 1y ago
might be bad cosmic ray rejection during green exposure
watersb 1y ago
Could be a satellite that moved into the frame during green. There was a livestream presentation and press conference up on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/live/Zv22_Amsreo?si=zQLeGfJokZoCPkji https://www.youtube.com/live/Zv22_Amsreo?si=zQLeGfJokZoCPkji At time 1:38:19 - one hour 38 minutes 19 seconds - into the livestream presentation, there's a slide that shows RGB streaks of fast-moving objects that were removed for the final image. Those streaks are apparently asteroids. Perhaps it is indeed a glitch or cosmic ray event. (Is there a better URL for the slide deck?)
dogben 1y ago
something red https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.03 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=186.82033+8.25479&fov=0.0...
- dogben 1y ago
  fixed link: https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=187.04483+7.00898&fov=0.22 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=187.04483+7.00898&fov=0.2...
binarystargazer 1y ago
Image creator here. This is such a massive dataset, most of the image processing needed to be custom written software pipelines. It not really practical for every pixel to be hand inspected. A few defects (and bright asteroids) imprinted through. It really hard to decide what is a real weird thing in the universe, and what is some sort of instrumental effect. We try to not pre-decide on what we think we should be seeing and filter for those by using things such as using classifiers. That leaves us with heuristics based on temporal information, size (is it smaller than a point spread function), and other related things. On large numbers of objects and pixels 1 in a thousand or 1 in a million outliers are bound to occur.

botswana99 1y ago

Jesus H Christ, the Universe is big.

xoxxala 1y ago
“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” -Douglas Adams
- OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago
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anjel 1y ago
Sometimes I feel like a diatom floiting in the ocean
- ahazred8ta 1y ago
  Yeah, but there's an old saying: "The ocean is small; ports are big."

jcims 1y ago

The wikipedia article is quite good - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory (Edit: Treasure trove of details in the references if any of your interests are adjacent to this) The image of the woman holding the model of the sensor is nice because it includes a moon for scale. Question I was curious about is whether or not the focal plane was flat (it is). This is an interesting tidbit: > Once images are taken, they are processed according to three different timescales, prompt (within 60 seconds), daily, and annually. > The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself. This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out. They are estimating 10 million alerts per night, which will be released publicly after the previously mentioned assessment takes place.

robotnikman 1y ago
>The prompt products are alerts, issued within 60 seconds of observation, about objects that have changed brightness or position relative to archived images of that sky position. Transferring, processing, and differencing such large images within 60 seconds (previous methods took hours, on smaller images) is a significant software engineering problem by itself.[64] >This stage of processing will be performed at a classified government facility so events that would reveal secret assets can be edited out. Interesting, I'm guessing secret spy satellites?
- kkylin 1y ago
  "Let's look for spy satellites / orbiters" was an "application" I wondered about. My second thought about this was: maybe the US (and possibly other countries) already have something like this, but classified?
  - dekhn 1y ago

OhNoNotAgain_99 1y ago

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royal__ 1y ago

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space."

mjsweet 1y ago

Back in January 2010 I went on a blind date with a lady who’s now my wife — an astrophysicist. We talked about this instrument and how Google would shuffle petabytes of raw observations, then distilling them into datasets researchers could actually use (don't know if Google is still involved?). We’ll celebrate 15 years of marriage this January, and I have been following the progress of this telescope since 2007 or so. It's amazing how long it takes for these instruments to come online, but the benefits are significant.

jcims 1y ago
> We’ll celebrate 15 years of marriage this January, Congrats!

stefantalpalaru 1y ago

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AStonesThrow 1y ago

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throw0101c 1y ago

PetaPixel has a decent article / video on the topic from a visit to the observatory: * https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/hands-on-at-the-vera-c-rubin-observatory-and-its-first-enormous-5-gigapixel-image/ https://petapixel.com/2025/06/23/hands-on-at-the-vera-c-rubi... Not super technical, but a little higher level (with decent analogies to photography, for their traditional audience).

adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
I really like that they mentioned how the telescope will be sub-optimal for wedding photography

Helmut10001 1y ago

Check out this video: https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-gallery/5iqj02kcs14lt24j845a58n15p https://rubinobservatory.org/gallery/collections/first-look-... Incredible.

0x0203 1y ago
For anyone that hasn't clicked the link, it shows that in just a few days, the observatory has already found over 2000 new asteroids. That is indeed very impressive.
- KurSix 1y ago
  Imagine what it'll be turning up once the full survey is underway

nvk255 1y ago

For a step by step tour: https://skyviewer.app/tours/cosmic-treasure-chest/ https://skyviewer.app/tours/cosmic-treasure-chest/

gattr 1y ago

Related: When a Telescope Is a National-Security Risk [1]; TL;DR: VCRO is capable of imaging spy- and other classified US satellites. An automated filtering system (involves routing through some government processing facility) is in place to remove them from the freshly captured raw data used for the public transient phenomena alert service. 3 days later, unredacted data is made available (by then the elusive, variable-orbit assets are long gone.) [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/vera-rubin-telescope-spy-satellite/680814/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/12/vera-rub...

funkypants 1y ago

What is this? https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=183.65537+6.09434&fov=0.08 https://skyviewer.app/embed?target=183.65537+6.09434&fov=0.0...

spacecadet 1y ago
Looks like two galaxies interacting/merging.

0x0203 1y ago

Why do the brighter objects have the four way cross artifact? My (apparently incorrect) understanding was that those types of artifacts were a result of support structures holding reflecting mirrors on a telescope. But this camera just has a "standard" glass lense with nothing obstructing the light path to the sensor.

frontfor 1y ago
It’s a reflecting telescope, not a camera with a glass lens.
- 0x0203 1y ago
  Ah, thanks. I had seen a bunch of hype about the camera itself (which is on its own very impressive) and assumed that was the complete device. Didn't realize it was part of a larger telescope.
binarystargazer 1y ago
You are not wholly wrong! There is both a supporting structure for the mirror, AND a glass lens in front of the sensor to further flatten the incoming light. The interesting thing about the spikes in our images is that they stay fixed in image plane coordinates, not sky coordinates. So as the night sky moves (earth rotates) the spikes rotate relative to the sky leading to a star burst pattern over multiple exposures.
ethan_smith 1y ago
Those diffraction spikes are caused by the four-vane spider structure supporting the secondary mirror in the telescope's optical path, not by the camera lenses themselves.

KurSix 1y ago

The potential for discoveries here seems enormous

binarystargazer 1y ago

I'm the Rubin team member responsible for mapping the data into RGB images. I have been a long time reader of hacker news, but finally made an account to comment on this. I wanted to thank everyone here for their interest and taking their time to check out these images. Seeing everyone interested and engaged makes all the long hours worth it.

phkahler 1y ago
What range of wavelengths are in the original images? Do you produce multiple RGB images for looking at different things? c'mon, what does that entail? ;-)
- binarystargazer 1y ago
  The filters used for this range from near infrared to near uv. We used 4 different filters in all (for this image, the telescope has more). In general yes to fully appreciate all the color information as a human we need to generate different color combos so our eyes can pick up different contrasts. However, what we strive for is being accurate to "if your eyes COULD see like this, it would look like this". To the best our our ability of course. We did a lot of research into human perception to create this and tired to map the information of color and intensity in a similar way to how your brain constructs that information into an image. Let me tell you, I did not appreciate how deep a topic this was before starting, and how limited our file formats and electronic reproduction capabilities are for this. The data has such a range of information (in color and intensity) it is hard to encode into existing formats that most people are able to display. I really want to spend some time to do this in modern HDR (true HDR, not tone-mapping) where the brightness can actually be encoded separately than just RGB values. The documentation on these (several competing) formats is a bit all over the place though. Edit: I wanted to edit to add, if anyone reading this is an expert in HDR formats and or processing, I'd live to pick your brain a bit!
  - feoren 1y ago
    I'm impressed so much thought went into how to colorize the image! Sometimes it seems like space photos are just colorized thoughtlessly, or to increase the "wow" factor, so it's great to hear how careful and thoughtful you guys were in mapping this data to color-space.

matiascoin 1y ago

Amazing