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| Vera C. Rubin Observatory and what it's looking at. (Source and description.) |
At Monday's unveiling of the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on Cerro Pachón in Chile, director Željko Ivezić promised,
... At the end of presentation you will get the link [to this site/application] and then you can spend the rest of your day enjoying these ten million galaxies.
Ivezić made this promise as he presented stunning initial images from the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope and its world-record-sized digital camera. In the hour and a half news conference I linked above ("Monday's unveiling"), his wonderful presentation, given with both awe and humor, starts here. If you are a space or cosmology nerd or a fan of science journalism, you'll want to see all of the rest of this video, but if not, Scientific American has done you a great service by summarizing the presentation, and selecting several shorter videos, in their article, "Majestic First Images from Rubin Observatory Show Universe in More Detail Than Ever Before."
Most news headlines these days don't give us much joy, but I found this Rubin Observatory presentation and press conference, clunky as it was in places, very inspiring. Željko Ivezić's enthusiasm, and the heartfelt comments from the news conference panel (question-and-answer portion starts here), gave a wonderful human dimension to an otherwise tech-heavy theme and the staggering cosmic scale of the images themselves.
You might ask what distinguishes this earth-bound observatory from the Hubble and James Webb telescopes in space. Those amazing space tools can focus on very specific places, at distances that take us close to the apparent origins of our universe. The Rubin Observatory, on the other hand, will photograph the entire sky that's visible on its mountain, through full revolutions of the earth, over and over. These high-resolution images will be compiled over a ten-year period. Scientists and other viewers worldwide will be able to gain access to the images, including celestial movements and changes, and evidences of dark matter and dark energy. The compilation is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Here's how it compares to other astronomical survey projects and catalogs, but one of its main advantages is simply the combination of the unprecedented speed of its repeating image-capturing cycles, without losing high resolution.
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| Rubin in 1963 using Kitt Peak National Observatory's 36-inch telescope with Kent Ford's image tube spectrograph attached. (Source and description.) |
Instead of spending the last two days just looking at ten million galaxies, I've enjoyed reading about Vera Rubin and some of her contemporary colleagues, such as Kent Ford, Geoffrey Burbridge, Margaret Burbridge ... and following up some of the numerous links on their Wikipedia pages.
In case you see politics in everything, as I tend to do, notice that several of the initial speakers in the long video puffed the USA's role as the world leader in science. That made it all the more interesting to notice the incredible variety of immigrants, international participants, cultures, and languages involved in the Rubin Observatory program.
It's also interesting to note that the press conference press handler turned away a question about future funding in light of federal budget cuts. (One earlier projection estimated running costs of $40 million per year.)
Now, back to the images .... Or as Željko Ivezić says, "Warp One, engage!"
A few more words about the Rubin Observatory: here are the project's four main science goals.
"Racist is a tough little word," wrote linguist John McWhorter in The Atlantic. "Many of us think its meaning is obvious, but it has evolved quite a bit from its original signification over the past several decades."
What would you say? What are useful current definitions of "racism," "systemic racism," and "racist," based on your own experience or on sources you trust and recommend? In a brief survey, I'd like to ask you five questions that may help me write a related blog post, but, if that happens, nobody's comments will be attributed without permission.
An urgent question (and an offer of practical resources for local Friends meetings) from Wess Daniels: Who gave us Guilford College?
Joseph and his brothers: Tom Gates continues his series on Quakers and the end of scapegoating.
Micah Bales on the Gerasenes and their unhappy reaction to a healing. (Context: Luke 8:26-39.) And how would we react?
Our reading this morning leaves us with no doubt: Healing is hard. True healing disrupts as much as it restores. The transformation that Jesus brings ripples out from those who are being healed to touch the whole fabric of society. When we get healed, we’ll find ourselves in a new kind of trouble. Holy trouble.
Nadya Tolokonnikova (of Pussy Riot fame) and her prison cell installation in a downtown Los Angeles gallery.
“One thing that I just don’t vibe with in modern American society – there’s an entire thing about safety. And I’ve lived my life in a way that safety was the last thing that I would care about,” she said. “This is a thing I think about a lot lately. We need to be less safe, be ready to offend ourselves and other people. Otherwise, Maga people are just going to keep winning, because they’re not afraid.”
At least the second time I've ended with this clip: Gino Matteo and Jason Ricci ... "I need Jesus to walk with me."
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