Pulsating stars. Supernova explosions. Streaking asteroids. Far-off galaxies.
Humankind recently saw the first stunning images of outer space taken by the world's largest digital camera – and FIU helped make the pictures a reality.
The camera sits inside the new telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile built to map the entire sky visible from the Southern hemisphere.
Each exposure of the camera lasts 30 seconds before the telescope rotates a few degrees and the sequence begins again. Between sundown and sunup, more than 800 images – the widest ever recorded – are captured as part of a project to create a detailed time-lapse survey of the heavens.
The nightly photoshoot will continue for the next ten years, bringing to scientists and amateur stargazers around the world something never before seen by Earthlings.
"Amazing," says FIU astronomer James Webb of the moment he and students witnessed the first images made available.
"You're looking at stars in our galaxy," he says of the closest objects. "Then you're looking at distant galaxies," he points out on a screen at the university's astro science center. "And the colors basically give you an indication of how far away they are," he explains of the swirls and dots of various hues that together depict a magnificent, floating expanse of gases and rock.
