Simonyi Survey telescope poised to unlock cosmic wonders

The installation of the main 8.4-yard mirror marks the completion of the Simonyi Survey Telescope, which houses the largest digital camera in the world. The Very C. Rubin Observatory in Chile announced via CNN on Wednesday that the first images of the sky are expected to be captured by the end of 2025.

According to PAP, the complete telescope is equipped with three mirrors and a working ComCam camera with a resolution of 144 megapixels. In the coming months, after conducting appropriate tests, the team will install the last component—the LSST camera, which is noteworthy in size. This equipment is as large as a car and boasts an impressive resolution of 3200 megapixels, equivalent to the total number of pixels found in 300 cell phones. This camera will be capable of capturing an area of the sky equal to the surface of 40 full moons.

"The preparatory work literally took ten years, but you never know if everything is operational until you turn it all on," said Clare Higgs, an astronomy outreach specialist at the observatory. She added that the first observations and images are planned for the end of 2025.

The telescope will image the entire visible sky every three nights, taking approximately 1,000 photos each cycle. Its operation is expected to continue for the next ten years. Astronomers anticipate that the telescope's work will lead to the discovery of 17 billion new stars and 20 billion galaxies.

The LSST camera will be able to take a photo every 30 seconds, generating 20 terabytes of data daily. This is equivalent to the amount of data generated by continuously watching movies on Netflix for three years or listening to music on Spotify for 50 years. Astronomers estimate that more than 60 million gigabytes of raw data about the southern sky will be produced as part of the project.

The process of transmitting each photo from the observatory in Chile to the Stanford University research centre in California will take just 60 seconds. Artificial intelligence and algorithms at the centre will analyze the images for any changes or moving objects, providing alerts if significant findings are detected.

"We expect about 10 million alerts per night from the telescope," said Higgs. She noted that the data will initially be available only to a selected group of astronomers, becoming publicly accessible after two years.

The new telescope is situated at the American Very C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón, a mountain approximately 8,800 feet high, located about 300 miles north of Chile's capital, Santiago. Rubin, who passed away in 2016, was the scientist who first confirmed the existence of dark matter.