Simonyi Survey telescope set to unveil the universe by 2025

The installation of the main 7.7-metre mirror completed the construction of the Simonyi Survey Telescope, which has the largest digital camera in the world. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile announced via CNN on Wednesday that the first images of the sky would be captured by the end of 2025.

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 final component – the LSST camera, which is impressively large. It is equipment the size of a car, with an impressive resolution of 3200 megapixels. This value corresponds to the number of pixels that 300 mobile phones have. This camera will capture an area of the sky corresponding to the surface of 40 full Moons.

Clare Higgs, an astronomy outreach specialist at the observatory stated that the preparatory work literally lasted ten years, but no one ever knows if everything is working until you turn everything on. 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 during that time. Its operation is anticipated for the next ten years. Astronomers predict that the telescope's work will allow the discovery of 17 billion new stars and 20 billion galaxies.

The LSST camera will be able to take a photo every 30 seconds, meaning it can generate 20 terabytes of data daily. This is the same amount of data generated by continuously watching films on Netflix for three years or listening to music on Spotify for 50 years. Astronomers estimate that the project will generate over 60 million gigabytes of raw data about the southern sky.

The process of transmitting each photo from the observatory in Chile to the research centre managed by Stanford University in California will take only 60 seconds. There, artificial intelligence and algorithms will analyse the images for any changes or moving objects, informing about the discovery of something significant.

- We’re anticipating about 10 million alerts per night coming off the telescope - said Higgs. She added that the data would initially be available only to a selected group of astronomers, and after two years, it would be made publicly available.

The new telescope was placed in the American Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón, a mountain with a height of 2,682 metres, located about 480 kilometres north of Santiago, the capital of Chile. Rubin, who passed away in 2016, was a scientist who first confirmed the existence of dark matter.