Department Colloquium | First Look with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and the World's Largest Camera

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which features the world's largest digital Camera, will observe billions of galaxies, billions of stars in our own galaxy the Milky Way, as well as millions of objects closer to home in the solar system. Every night over a ten year survey, the Rubin Observatory will observe much of the night sky, so that every portion of the sky will be imaged nearly a thousand times. Rubin has just released its first images, with thousands of asteroids and millions of stars and galaxies. In this talk I will describe the capabilities of this new observatory and especially how we will be able to “see” the dark portion of our universe in unprecedented detail.