Different observatories, just like the Hubble House Telescope and the James Webb House Telescope, have already begun stitching collectively this map from their photographs of galaxies. However Rubin plans to take action with distinctive precision and scale, analyzing the shapes of billions of galaxies quite than the tons of of thousands and thousands that present telescopes observe, in keeping 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 Giant Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST boasts the biggest focal airplane ever constructed for astronomy, granting it entry to massive patches of the sky.
The telescope can be designed to reorient its gaze each 34 seconds, which means astronomers will be capable to scan your complete sky each three nights. The LSST will revisit every galaxy about 800 instances all through its tenure, says Steven Ritz, a Rubin challenge scientist on the College of California, Santa Cruz. The repeat exposures will let Rubin group members extra exactly measure how the galaxies are distorted, refining their map of darkish matter’s net. “We’re going to see these galaxies deeply and incessantly,” Ritz says. “That’s the ability of Rubin: the sheer grasp of with the ability to see the universe intimately and on repeat.”
The final word aim is to overlay this map on totally different fashions of darkish matter and study 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 extraordinary matter solely by way of gravity. Different fashions counsel totally different conduct. Every comes with its personal image of how darkish matter ought to clump in halos surrounding galaxies. By plotting its chart of darkish matter in opposition to what these fashions predict, Rubin would possibly exclude some theories and favor others.
A cosmic tug of warfare
If darkish matter lies on one facet of a magnet, pulling matter collectively, then you definately’ll flip it over to seek out darkish power, pushing it aside. “You may consider it as a cosmic tug of warfare,” Plazas Malagón says.
Darkish power was found within the late Nineties, when astronomers discovered that the universe was not solely increasing, however doing so at an accelerating charge, with galaxies transferring away from each other at larger and better speeds.
