The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located in Chile, has begun a 10-year survey of the universe using the largest digital camera ever built. The telescope will scan the southern sky, taking hundreds of images every night. Scientists hope the project will help them map billions of stars in the Milky Way, the galaxy that contains Earth, and billions of galaxies beyond it. Because the camera works quickly, it will capture the same areas of sky many times, helping researchers find objects that were previously too hard to see. Phil Marshall, the observatory's deputy director of operations, said scientists worldwide will use the data to study the universe in new ways.

Rubin released its first images in 2025, including colorful pictures of distant clouds of gas and dust thousands of light-years from Earth. A light-year, a unit that measures distance in space, is almost 9.7 trillion kilometers. Since then, researchers have adjusted the equipment to prepare for the survey. The new images may help scientists learn how galaxies form over billions of years, and how the universe began.

The observatory is funded by two government organizations, the U.S. National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. It is named after astronomer Vera Rubin, who first offered evidence that a mysterious material called dark matter might exist. Researchers hope to learn more about both dark matter and dark energy, another mysterious force.