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 somewhat than the a whole bunch of thousands and thousands that present telescopes observe, in accordance with Andrés Alejandro Plazas Malagón, Rubin operations scientist at SLAC Nationwide Laboratory. “We’re going to have the widest galaxy survey to this point,” 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 biggest focal airplane ever constructed for astronomy, granting it entry to massive patches of the sky.
The telescope can also be designed to reorient its gaze each 34 seconds, which means astronomers will have the ability to scan all the sky each three nights. The LSST will revisit every galaxy about 800 instances all through its tenure, says Steven Ritz, a Rubin venture 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 incessantly,” Ritz says. “That’s the facility of Rubin: the sheer grasp of having 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 atypical matter solely by 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 towards what these fashions predict, Rubin would possibly exclude some theories and favor others.
A cosmic tug of conflict
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 conflict,” Plazas Malagón says.
Darkish power was found within the late Nineteen Nineties, when astronomers discovered that the universe was not solely increasing, however doing so at an accelerating fee, with galaxies shifting away from each other at larger and better speeds.