The Telescope that Sees the Invisible
- 24th Sep 2025
- Author: Chloe Hopkinson
Imagine photographing the entire night sky, every single night, and discovering cosmic events as they unfold in real time. That’s the mission of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, a groundbreaking project poised to revolutionise the world of astronomy.
But its story begins with one woman: Vera Rubin. She changed our understanding of the universe by proving that most of it is the invisible mystery known as dark matter. Her fight to be heard reshaped science, and now her legacy is about to reshape the cosmos. In the 1970s, Rubin gazed into the darkness and discovered that galaxies don’t move the way they should. Her work cracked open one of the greatest mysteries of modern science: dark matter.
And now, decades later, one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet is ready to capture the most detailed movie of the night sky ever attempted.
What is the observatory?
Perched 2,682m high on Cerro Pachón in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is humanity’s newest eye on the universe. It will capture the entire southern sky in unparalleled detail, creating a decade-long, ultra-high-definition timelapse of the cosmos with the help of its main 8.4 metre mirror and record-breaking 3.2-gigapixel camera - that's a mirror almost the size of a traditional red London bus and a camera power that's 64 times greater than today's top-of-the-range smartphones! This survey will reveal asteroids, comets, supernovae, pulsating stars, distant galaxies, and perhaps phenomena never seen before.
What began as a sketch in the 1990s grew into a bold plan to probe the mysteries of the universe, with dark matter as a key target. Proposed in 2001 as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), the project advanced quickly: mirror construction started in 2007, and in 2015, a Chilean First Stone ceremony marked the observatory’s foundations. In 2019, it was renamed to honour pioneering astronomer Vera Rubin, whose work revealed dark matter’s presence.
What will the observatory do?
Over a ten-year period, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory is designed to tackle four of the universe’s greatest mysteries:
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![Dark Matter Illustration]()
RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/J. Pinto Dark matter and dark energy
Using a technique called weak gravitational lensing, the observatory will study how massive galaxies bend light from more distant ones, creating subtle “cosmic mirages.” These distortions will reveal where invisible dark matter lies and help scientists understand how dark energy drives the universe’s expansion.
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![The Solar System]()
Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/J. Pinto The Solar System
Rubin will catalogue millions of moving objects, asteroids, comets, and near-Earth objects, while uncovering how our Solar System formed. This work will also improve planetary defence strategies against potential impacts.
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![Southern Virgo Cluster]()
National Science Foundation/Department of Energy - Office of Science/Vera C. Rubin Observatory A dynamic universe
By scanning the sky repeatedly, the observatory will catch transient events: exploding stars, pulsating stars, and other short-lived cosmic phenomena. These discoveries will offer new insights into how the universe evolves over time.
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![Milky Way Over Vera Rubin Observatory]()
RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/DOE/NSF/AURA/B. Quint The Milky Way
Finally, it will map billions of stars in unprecedented detail, tracking their movements, colours, and brightness to construct the most complete 3D map of our galaxy. This map will unlock clues about the Milky Way’s history, structure, and formation.
Together, these efforts provide a treasure trove of data to enable scientists to study observations and findings as they are changing in real time and promise to reshape our understanding of the universe.
Who is Vera Rubin?
"I was more interested in the question than in the answer. I decided at an early age that we inhabit a very curious world."
Dr Vera C. Rubin (July 1928 – December 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered discoveries about galactic rotation rates across the universe, where her work provided the first widely accepted evidence for the existence of the invisible dark matter. Her love and passion for science and space was fostered by her parents from an early age, where her mother helped her browse science books in the library, and her father assisted her in making a telescope from cardboard to track meteors and watch the stars from her bedroom window. This was just the start of her lifelong curiosity for space.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in astronomy in 1948 from Vassar College – Maria Mitchell, a female astronomer, taught here in 1865 and was a model of inspiration for Rubin. Rubin was also the only graduate in astronomy that year! Continuing her education, she enrolled at Princeton but was rejected due to her gender. Instead she enrolled at Cornell and earned her master’s degree in 1951. Carrying on her investment in science, she was accepted into Georgetown University and earned her PhD in 1954, though her dissertation proved a controversial topic where she concluded that galaxies clumped together rather than being randomly arranged throughout the cosmos – Rubin’s findings were confirmed 15 years after the completion of her dissertation.
Rubin’s key contributions came in the 1970s, when she and collaborator Kent Ford measured how fast the stars in galaxies were travelling. According to the maths and mechanics of Newtonian laws, stars at the edge of a galaxy should move slower than the stars closer to the centre – in the same way that the outer planets in our Solar System move more slowly than the inner ones. However, Rubin’s observations showed the opposite: the outer stars were moving just as fast as the ones near the centre, and this was consistent across many galaxies.
The only explanation is that there was something invisible there, pulling on the stars with gravity and preventing them from flying out of the galaxy like a child being flung off a playground merry-go-round.
Rubin called this mystifying and peculiar stuff dark matter. Her findings showed the world that most of the universe isn’t made of the things we can see like stars and planets but in fact about 85% of the universe is the invisible and powerful dark matter and dark energy: this changed our way of viewing the cosmos forever.
The story of Rubin and the observatory is one of curiosity, persistence, and a universe far stranger than we imagined, and she is an exceptional example of what it means to be a scientist. Her name is the perfect fit for a revolutionary observatory that will transform how we see the cosmos.
A decade of discovery
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is more than just a telescope: it is a time machine, a detective, and a storyteller all at once. With every shutter click of its powerful eye, it will reveal the hidden fabric of the universe, the flicker of new stars being born, the dance of galaxies across cosmic time, and perhaps even clues to the greatest mystery of all: what dark matter really is.
With a trailblazing telescope bearing Vera Rubin's name, humanity stands on the edge of discoveries she could only have dreamed of. The next decade promises to rewrite the textbooks, redraw the maps of our galaxy, and maybe even reshape our understanding of reality itself.
When the Vera C. Rubin Observatory gazes into the night, it will not just be looking at the stars. It will be looking for answers to questions Vera Rubin dared to ask, and in doing so, it will carry her legacy forward into the vast unknown.
"Don't let anyone keep you down for silly reasons such as who you are. And don't worry about prizes and fame. The real prize is finding something new out there."
- Vera Rubin, The Mother of Dark Matter
Full Credits / References:
(Banner image) Illustration of Vera Rubin and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, Credit: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
(Carousel of 6 images) Photographs of the Observatory, from the Chilean First Stone ceremony, and during construction, Credits: NSF/AURA/B. Quint; NOIRLab/NSF/AURA/T. Matsopoulos; NOIRLab Office; Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; Olivier Bonin/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA
(Image 1) Illustration of Dark Matter, Credit: NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA/J. Pinto
(Image 2) Illustration of the Solar System, Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/J. Pinto
(Image 3) A dynamic universe, Credit: National Science Foundation/Department of Energy - Office of Science/Vera C. Rubin Observatory
(Image 4) Milky Way over Observatory, Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/DOE/NSF/AURA/B. Quint
(Image 5) Vera Rubin measuring spectra, Credit: NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
(Image 6) Vera Rubin at Kitt Peak Observatory, Credit: KPNO/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
(Image 7) Observatory with sunset, Credit: Rubin Observatory/NSF/AURA/C. Corco
(Image 8) Illustration of Vera Rubin, Credit: Rubin Obs./NSF/AURA
