World’s Largest Digital Camera To Reveal Revolutionary First Images On Monday – And You Can Watch Live

Astronomers are ready to share with the world the very first groundbreaking images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The facility, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy, is set to observe the sky like never before, thanks to its incredible digital camera, the largest in the world.   

You can follow the announcement of the "first light" images and videos live at 11 am ET (3 pm UTC) on Monday, June 23 via the Rubin Observatory YouTube channel or here below, and if you can't watch it live, don't worry, we will publish the incredible images and video (we've seen them and trust us, they are incredible) after the big reveal. The debut observations from Rubin are ultra-high definition, showing off the power and capabilities of this instrument for the first time.

It is a pivotal moment in observational astronomy: phenomenal movies of the universe and the most detailed map of the night sky will soon become a cornerstone of all space science. The images are going to be so detailed that it will be like resolving a golf ball from around 25 kilometers (15 miles) away. All this, while the camera snaps a 3200-megapixel image  – an area of the sky seven times wider than the full Moon – every 40 seconds.

The camera is the secret. It's one thing to say it’s the world’s largest digital camera, but trying to describe just how utterly enormous it is is another. The setup has two lenses, the first one is 1.5 meters (5 feet) across. Unsurprisingly, this is the largest ever lens constructed for such a purpose. The second one is 90 centimeters (3 feet) wide and seals the focal plane of the lens, which is kept in a vacuum. For comparison, your average digital SLR camera lens is around 13 by 10 centimeters (5 by 4 inches).

The focal plane is, of course, the crucial aspect. It is made of 201 CCD sensors, similar to those in your phone and digital cameras, but they are custom-made just like the lenses. Each pixel on the sensors is 10 microns across, and the focal plane is so flat that the surface doesn’t vary by more than one-tenth of the width of a human hair. 

This incredible instrument will allow astronomers to better understand the cosmos and its (still hypothetical) components, namely dark matter and dark energy. It will allow for a massive increase in the number of known small objects like comets and asteroids in the Solar System by a factor of at least 10, possibly up to a factor of 100. The telescope will cover the whole southern sky every three or four nights, capturing transient astronomical events as well as adding even more data to the efforts to map the Milky Way.

How to watch the Vera C. Rubin Observatory's first images reveal

If you feel such a momentous reveal should happen in public, you are also in luck. There will be events held in planetariums and universities all over the world. Go to the Rubin First Look Watch Party website to find a location near you.

The conference live stream will take place on Monday, June 23, at 11 am ET (3 pm UTC). To watch, you can visit the Vera C. Rubin website, the Rubin Observatory YouTube channel, or come back here, where we've embedded the livestream above. The conference will first introduce the Observatory and then reveal the first images before discussing their significance. It will be available in both English and Spanish.