Vera C Rubin Observatory

Vera C. Rubin Observatory Latest News

Scientists analyzing the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory recently discovered the fastest-spinning asteroid in its size class yet named 2025 MN45.

About Vera C. Rubin Observatory

• It is located 8,684 feet above sea level atop the Cerro Pachón mountain in the Chilean Andes, where dry air and dark skies provide one of the world’s best observing locations.
• It is named after American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, who provided evidence about dark matter for the first time in the 1970s.
• It is jointly funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
• The observatory has four main scientific goals:
  • Understand the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
  • Create an inventory of the asteroids, comets, and other objects in the solar system.
  • Map the Milky Way and help reconstruct its history.
  • Explore objects — like exploding stars and black holes — that change position or brightness over time.
• The centrepiece of the observatory is the Simonyi Survey Telescope. 
  • The 8.4-meter telescope has the world’s largest digital camera, which is the size of a small car, weighs 2,800 kg, and boasts a staggering resolution of 3,200 megapixels.
  • It can capture about 45 times the area of the full moon in the sky with each exposure. 
  • It is the fastest-slewing telescope in the world and takes just five seconds to move and settle from one target to another. 
  • This speed is due to the telescope’s compact structure (owing to the three-mirror design) and its mount, which floats on a film of oil.
• This observatory will provide comprehensive images of the night sky unlike anything astronomers have seen before.
• It will constantly scan the sky of the southern hemisphere for 10 years, creating an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the universe.
• It will produce approximately 20 terabytes of data every night. The amount of data gathered by Rubin Observatory in its first year alone will be greater than that collected by all other optical observatories combined. 
• It revealed its first images on June 23, 2025. 

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Key Facts about 2025 MN45

• It is a newly discovered asteroid.
• It resides in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. 
• It measures about 0.4 miles (710 meters) across.
• It completes one rotation every 1.88 minutes, making it “the fastest-spinning asteroid with a diameter over 500 meters that astronomers have found.

Source: LS