---
title: "Chile observatory captures the universe with 3,200-megapixel camera"
description: "SANTIAGO, June 27 (Reuters) - Chile's Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which boasts the world's largest digital camera, has begun displaying its first images of the cosmos, allowing astronomers to figure out how the solar system formed and even whether an asteroid poses a threat to Earth."
type: "NewsArticle"
publisher: "Daily Maverick"
site: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za"
section: "Newsdeck"
author: "Reuters"
author_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/author/reuters/"
canonical_url: "https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025-06-27-chile-observatory-captures-the-universe-with-3200-megapixel-camera/"
published: "2025-06-27T13:32:08"
updated: "2025-06-27T13:32:09"
lang: "en-ZA"
word_count: 272
---

# Chile observatory captures the universe with 3,200-megapixel camera

> SANTIAGO, June 27 (Reuters) - Chile's Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which boasts the world's largest digital camera, has begun displaying its first images of the cosmos, allowing astronomers to figure out how the solar system formed and even whether an asteroid poses a threat to Earth.

By Reuters · Published 27 June 2025, 15:32 SAST · Updated 27 June 2025, 15:32 SAST

## Key points
- Perched on Pachon Hill, the Vera Rubin Observatory is set to revolutionize astronomy by unleashing a deluge of data—think 1,000 nightly sky snapshots and a flood of alerts so vast it could drown 83,000 inboxes, leaving scientists no choice but to enlist AI as their new celestial sidekick.
- The Vera Rubin Observatory in Coquimbo, Chile, features an 8.4-meter telescope with a groundbreaking 3,200-megapixel camera.
- In just 10 hours, the observatory identified over 2,100 new asteroids, significantly enhancing data collection capabilities.
- Astronomers can expect unprecedented data volumes, with potential discoveries of millions of galaxies and stars.
- The observatory's nightly alerts will flood researchers with information, necessitating the use of AI tools for analysis.

## Content

Located on Pachon Hill in the northern region of Coquimbo, the 8.4-meter (27-1/2-foot) telescope has a 3,200-megapixel camera feeding a powerful data processing system.

"It's really going to change and challenge the way people work with their data," said William O'Mullane, a project manager focused on data at Vera Rubin.

The observatory detected over 2,100 previously unseen asteroids in 10 hours of observations, focusing on a small area of the visible sky. Its ground-based and space-based peers discover in total some 20,000 asteroids a year.

O'Mullane said the observatory would allow astronomers to collect huge amounts of data quickly and make unexpected finds.

"Rather than the usual couple of observations and writing an (academic) paper. No, I'll give you a million galaxies. I'll give you a million stars or a billion even, because we have them: 20 billion galaxy measurements," he said.

The center is named after American astronomer Vera C. Rubin, a pioneer in finding conclusive evidence of the existence of large amounts of invisible material known as dark matter.

Each night, Rubin will take some 1,000 images of the southern hemisphere sky, letting it cover the entire southern sky every three or four nights. The darkest skies above the arid [Atacama Desert](https://www.reutersconnect.com/all?search=all%3AL6N3I20H2&linkedFromStory=true) make Chile one of the best places worldwide for astronomical observation.

"The number of alerts the telescope will send every night is equivalent to the inboxes of 83,000 people. It's impossible for someone to look at that one by one," said astrophysicist Francisco Foster.

"We're going to have to use artificial intelligence tools."

(Reporting by Jorge Vega; Writing by Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Sandra Maler)