Colossal 3200-megapixel camera kicks off a decade of cosmic surveying

Set on Cerro Pachón in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory now carries the largest digital camera in astronomy—a 3,200-megapixel sensor array on an 8.4-meter telescope. Built to image the southern sky every three nights for a decade, it will generate about 10 terabytes of data per night to map dark matter, discover asteroids, and catch distant supernovae. In its first year, it released ultra-detailed images of the Trifid and Lagoon Nebulae, the globular cluster NGC 6544, and other deep views, while also routinely producing millions of alerts for transient events worldwide. By spring 2026 it had already cataloged around 11,000 new asteroids, including 33 near-Earth objects.