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At Chile’s Vera Rubin Observatory, Earth’s Largest Camera Takes 3 Billion-Pixel Images of the Night Sky


At the heart of the new Vera C. Rubin Observatory is a digital camera that will create an unparalleled map of the cosmos.

When Times reporters visited the observatory on top of an 8,800-foot-high mountain in May, the telescope was undergoing calibration to measure minute differences in the sensitivity of the camera’s pixels. Specialized software will compare each new image with a template assembled from previous data, revealing changes in brightness or position in the sky. Simulations suggest that roughly one in 10 Rubin images will contain at least one bright streak or glint from the thousands of SpaceX Starlink and othersatellites orbiting Earth.

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