UW scientists develop telescope in Chile to discover millions of asteroids, galaxies
UW helps bring cosmos into focus with new telescope
University of Washington researchers are focused on a celestial light show with the groundbreaking Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The observatory, featuring the largest camera ever built, now offers a new "eye on the sky" thanks in part to UW's astronomy department.
SEATTLE - The first images from the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile revealed thousands of new asteroids and demonstrated the capabilities of the groundbreaking new telescope and the world's largest digital camera.
University of Washington scientists, engineers and software developers have spent the last 20 years working on it.
"It's a really unique telescope," said UW Astronomy Professor James Davenport. "It provides a wide-angle lens that surveys the night sky once every three days from Chile and performs this over a 10-year survey. So, we're gonna get this, not just this map, not just as beautiful image, but a movie of the night's sky over a decade."
He says finding asteroids that could threaten the Earth is one of the design purposes.
"We have to find all the asteroids we can. One of the great things about this is when you have a wide angle and an enormous deep lens that you can look into the universe, you see all the things that are far away and that are close up in front of you. So. already in the first few days, we've already discovered 2,000 new asteroids. But in the 1st 6 months, we expect to discover something like a million new asteroids, we're going to double the number of asteroids and comets and other little bits of rock in our own solar system that we know about in the1st year. Is it possible to see millions of galaxies too? Not just millions, but billions. We think there will be something like 10 billion galaxies that we'll survey and about as many stars, something like ten billion stars. That is, for reference, more stars than people on the planet, and that's a first," said Professor Davenport.
The Source: Information in this story came from the University of Washington and FOX 13 Seattle reporting.
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