Different observatories, just like the Hubble Area Telescope and the James Webb Area Telescope, have already begun stitching collectively this map from their photos of galaxies. However Rubin plans to take action with distinctive precision and scale, analyzing the shapes of billions of galaxies reasonably than the lots of of thousands and thousands that present telescopes observe, in line with Andrés Alejandro Plazas Malagón, Rubin operations scientist at SLAC Nationwide Laboratory. “We’re going to have the widest galaxy survey to date,” Plazas Malagón says.
Capturing the cosmos in such excessive definition requires Rubin’s 3.2-billion-pixel Massive Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST boasts the most important focal airplane ever constructed for astronomy, granting it entry to giant patches of the sky.
The telescope can be designed to reorient its gaze each 34 seconds, that means astronomers will be capable to scan your entire sky each three nights. The LSST will revisit every galaxy about 800 occasions all through its tenure, says Steven Ritz, a Rubin challenge scientist on the College of California, Santa Cruz. The repeat exposures will let Rubin staff members extra exactly measure how the galaxies are distorted, refining their map of darkish matter’s internet. “We’re going to see these galaxies deeply and continuously,” Ritz says. “That’s the ability of Rubin: the sheer grasp of having the ability to see the universe intimately and on repeat.”
The final word purpose is to overlay this map on totally different fashions of darkish matter and look at the outcomes. The main concept, the chilly darkish matter mannequin, means that darkish matter strikes slowly in comparison with the velocity of sunshine and interacts with abnormal matter solely by gravity. Different fashions recommend totally different habits. Every comes with its personal image of how darkish matter ought to clump in halos surrounding galaxies. By plotting its chart of darkish matter towards what these fashions predict, Rubin may exclude some theories and favor others.
A cosmic tug of struggle
If darkish matter lies on one aspect of a magnet, pulling matter collectively, then you definitely’ll flip it over to seek out darkish vitality, pushing it aside. “You possibly can consider it as a cosmic tug of struggle,” Plazas Malagón says.
Darkish vitality was found within the late Nineteen Nineties, when astronomers discovered that the universe was not solely increasing, however doing so at an accelerating charge, with galaxies shifting away from each other at larger and better speeds.