Monday/ looking at the stars 🔭

The first images of the brand new Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile have come in.
The completion of the telescope’s construction has been two decades in the making. It was built on a mountain in northern Chile, in the foothills of the Andes, and on the edge of the Atacama Desert. The altitude and dry atmosphere around it provide clear skies for observing the cosmos.

From Kenneth Chang and Katrina Miller’s reporting in the New York Times:
Rubin is far from the largest telescope in the world, but it is a technological marvel. The main structure of the telescope, with a 28-foot-wide primary mirror, an 11-foot-wide secondary mirror and the world’s largest digital camera, floats on a thin layer of oil. Magnetic motors twirl the 300-ton structure around — at full speed, it could complete one full rotation in a little more than half a minute.
Its unique design means Rubin can gaze deep, wide and fast, allowing the telescope to quickly pan across the sky, taking some 1,000 photos per night.
By scanning the entire sky every three to four days for 10 years, it will discover millions of exploding stars, space rocks flying past and patches of warped space-time that produce distorted, fun-house views of distant galaxies.