{"id":630998,"date":"2026-04-27T02:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T02:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/630998\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T02:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T02:24:09","slug":"the-vera-c-rubin-observatorys-eye-on-dark-matter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/630998\/","title":{"rendered":"The Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Eye on Dark Matter"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everything in space \u2013 from the Earth and Sun to black holes \u2013 accounts for just 15% of all matter in the universe<\/a>. The rest of the cosmos seems to be made of an invisible material astronomers call dark matter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Astronomers know dark matter exists because its gravity affects other things, such as light. But understanding what dark matter is remains an active area of research.<\/p>\n

With the release of its first images<\/a> this month, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has begun a 10-year mission to help unravel the mystery of dark matter. The observatory will continue the legacy of its namesake, a trailblazing astronomer who advanced our understanding of the other 85% of the universe.<\/p>\n

As a historian of astronomy<\/a>, I\u2019ve studied how Vera Rubin\u2019s contributions have shaped astrophysics. The observatory\u2019s name is fitting, given that its data will soon provide scientists with a way to build on her work and shed more light on dark matter.<\/p>\n

Wide view of the universe<\/p>\n

From its vantage point in the Chilean Andes mountains, the Rubin Observatory will document everything visible in the southern sky. Every three nights, the observatory and its 3,200 megapixel camera will make a record of the sky.<\/p>\n

This camera, about the size of a small car, is the largest digital camera ever built<\/a>. Images will capture an area of the sky roughly 45 times the size of the full Moon. With a big camera with a wide field of view, Rubin will produce about five petabytes of data every year. That\u2019s roughly 5,000 years\u2019 worth of MP3 songs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After weeks, months and years of observations, astronomers will have a time-lapse record revealing anything that explodes, flashes or moves \u2013 such as supernovas<\/a>, variable stars<\/a> or asteroids. They\u2019ll also have the largest survey of galaxies ever made. These galactic views are key to investigating dark matter.<\/p>\n

Galaxies are the key<\/p>\n

Deep field images from the Hubble Space Telescope<\/a>, the James Webb Space Telescope<\/a> and others have visually revealed the abundance of galaxies in the universe. These images are taken with a long exposure time to collect the most light, so that even very faint objects show up.<\/p>\n

Researchers now know that those galaxies aren\u2019t randomly distributed. Gravity and dark matter pull and guide them into a structure that resembles a spider\u2019s web or a tub of bubbles. The Rubin Observatory will expand upon these previous galactic surveys, increasing the precision of the data and capturing billions more galaxies.<\/p>\n

In addition to helping structure galaxies throughout the universe, dark matter also distorts the appearance of galaxies through an effect referred to as gravitational lensing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Light travels through space in a straight line \u2212 unless it gets close to something massive. Gravity bends light\u2019s path, which distorts the way we see it. This gravitational lensing effect provides clues that could help astronomers locate dark matter. The stronger the gravity, the bigger the bend in light\u2019s path.<\/p>\n

\"Many<\/a>The white galaxies seen here are bound in a cluster. The gravity from the galaxies and the dark matter bends the light from the more distant galaxies, creating contorted and magnified images of them.
NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI<\/a>
\nDiscovering dark matter<\/p>\n

For centuries, astronomers tracked and measured the motion of planets in the solar system. They found that all the planets followed the path predicted by Newton\u2019s laws of motion<\/a>, except for Uranus. Astronomers and mathematicians reasoned that if Newton\u2019s laws are true, there must be some missing matter \u2013 another massive object \u2013 out there tugging on Uranus. From this hypothesis<\/a>, they discovered Neptune, confirming Newton\u2019s laws.<\/p>\n

With the ability to see fainter objects in the 1930s, astronomers began tracking the motions of galaxies.<\/p>\n

California Institute of Technology astronomer Fritz Zwicky<\/a> coined the term dark matter in 1933, after observing galaxies in the Coma Cluster<\/a>. He calculated the mass of the galaxies based on their speeds, which did not match their mass based on the number of stars he observed.<\/p>\n

He suspected that the cluster could contain an invisible, missing matter that kept the galaxies from flying apart. But for several decades he lacked enough observational evidence to support his theory.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Vera Rubin operates the Carnegie spectrograph at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson.
Carnegie Institution for Science<\/a>, CC BY<\/a>
\nEnter Vera Rubin<\/p>\n

In 1965, Vera Rubin<\/a> became the first women hired onto the scientific staff at the Carnegie Institution\u2019s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

She worked with Kent Ford, who had built an extremely sensitive spectrograph<\/a> and was looking to apply it to a scientific research project. Rubin and Ford used the spectrograph to measure how fast stars orbit around the center of their galaxies.<\/p>\n

In the solar system, where most of the mass is within the Sun at the center, the closest planet, Mercury, moves faster than the farthest planet, Neptune.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had expected that as stars got farther and farther from the center of their galaxy, they would orbit slower and slower,\u201d Rubin said in 1992<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What they found in galaxies surprised them. Stars far from the galaxy\u2019s center were moving just as fast as stars closer in<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd that really leads to only two possibilities,\u201d Rubin explained<\/a>. \u201cEither Newton\u2019s laws don\u2019t hold, and physicists and astronomers are woefully afraid of that \u2026 (or) stars are responding to the gravitational field of matter which we don\u2019t see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Data piled up as Rubin created plot after plot. Her colleagues didn\u2019t doubt her observations, but the interpretation remained a debate. Many people were reluctant<\/a> to accept that dark matter was necessary to account for the findings in Rubin\u2019s data.<\/p>\n

Rubin continued studying galaxies, measuring how fast stars moved within them. She wasn\u2019t interested in investigating dark matter itself, but she carried on with documenting its effects on the motion of galaxies.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>A U.S quarter honors Vera Rubin\u2019s contributions to our understanding of dark matter.
United States Mint<\/a>, CC BY<\/a>
\nVera Rubin\u2019s legacy<\/p>\n

Today, more people are aware of Rubin\u2019s observations and contributions to our understanding of dark matter. In 2019, a congressional bill was introduced to rename the former Large Synoptic Survey Telescope to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. In June 2025, the U.S. Mint released a quarter<\/a> featuring Vera Rubin.<\/p>\n

Rubin continued to accumulate data about the motions of galaxies throughout her career. Others picked up where she left off and have helped advance dark matter research<\/a> over the past 50 years.<\/p>\n

In the 1970s, physicist James Peebles and astronomers Jeremiah Ostriker and Amos Yahil created computer simulations of individual galaxies<\/a>. They concluded, similarly to Zwicky, that there was not enough visible matter in galaxies to keep them from flying apart.<\/p>\n

They suggested that whatever dark matter is \u2212 be it cold stars, black holes or some unknown particle \u2212 there could be as much as 10 times the amount of dark matter than ordinary matter in galaxies.<\/p>\n

Throughout its 10-year run, the Rubin Observatory should give even more researchers the opportunity to add to our understanding of dark matter.<\/p>\n

Samantha Thompson is Astronomy Curator at the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everything in space \u2013 from the Earth and Sun to black holes \u2013 accounts for just 15% of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":630999,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-630998","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=630998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/630998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/630999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=630998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=630998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=630998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}