The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has unveiled a new ultra-detailed image of the famous COSMOS field, capturing over 650,000 galaxies and more than 50,000 stars. The image was taken by the world's largest digital camera and is part of a large-scale ten-year program to study the southern sky.
The COSMOS field (Cosmic Evolution Survey Deep Field) is one of the most studied areas of the universe. It contains over two million galaxies, covering about 75% of the history of the universe. The most distant of these are located up to 12 billion light-years away from Earth, reports Gizmodo.
The area is located in the constellation Sextans and occupies a patch of sky approximately three times the area of the visible disk of a full moon. Because the field is located away from the plane of the Milky Way, there are almost no nearby stars and clouds of dust that hinder the observation of distant galaxies.
The new image was created by combining several observations. It showcases a variety of galaxy types — spiral, elliptical, merging, as well as very faint red galaxies from the early universe. Bright stars of the Milky Way and faint bands of interstellar dust from our galaxy are noticeable in the foreground.
Previously, the COSMOS field had been extensively studied by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. Now, the Rubin Observatory has joined these efforts. Thanks to its wide field of view and high sensitivity, its camera allows not only for new images to be captured but also for comparisons with archival data accumulated over decades of observations.
Observations of this area will continue. The COSMOS field is among the regions of the sky that the observatory will study significantly more often than most other objects as part of the decade-long Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project.
During the implementation of the program, the telescope will capture wide-angle images of the entire southern sky every few nights. This will enable the creation of the most comprehensive catalog of the universe in history.
The observatory is equipped with the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy, with a resolution of 3.2 gigapixels, as well as a primary mirror with a diameter of 8.4 meters. This combination provides high sensitivity and allows for the detection of extremely faint objects.
The LSST data is expected to help scientists better understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy, study supernovae, and discover new asteroids approaching Earth.
The first images were published by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on June 23, 2025. At that time, images of millions of galaxies and stars of the Milky Way were presented, along with the discovery of 2,104 previously unknown asteroids.
Upon completion of the decade-long survey, the final archive will contain billions of celestial objects and trillions of measurements that will be made available to the global scientific community.
Leave a comment