SCIENCE LAB SCALING : COSMIC VISIONS

ATOP a Chilean mountain - counting all the stars in the sky. The largest digital camera on Earth has finally started filming a motion picture of our universe.

Last month, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a telescope perched atop a mountain at the edge of Atacama Desert in Chile, began the deepest survey yet of the entirety of the Southern sky.

Over the past 10 years, the telescope will drink in light from the billion of galaxies and stars, creating a record of how objects streak, pulse and explode in our solar system, the Milky Way and beyond.

'' This is the end of a 30-year wait,'' said Phil Marshall, the deputy director of the telescope's operations at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. ''It's a major milestone for us.''

This collection of data, known as the Legacy survey of Space and Time, may revolutionize knowledge of our galaxy's birth, the invisible matter permeating the cosmos, what shaped the universe and more.

Dr. Marshall said the survey was designed to see everything, '' even the things we don't know we're looking for yet.''

The team behind the observatory, a joint effort funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, unveiled several images of the cosmos that were jampacked with celestial goodness, a peek at what the Rubin could do - last year.

Since then, scientists have been busy conducting final tests and reviews of the telescope's operations and systems.

According to Bob Blum, the director of Rubin operations at National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, the team has also been hard at work ensuring that the telescope can operate reliably in different environmental conditions for the next decade.

The Rubin will capture the southern sky every couple of nights. '' But we are already seeing glimpses of new science,'' Dr. Blum said, including more than 11,000 new asteroids and views of Comet  31/ATLAS, which originated outside our solar system.

!WOW! thanks Katrina Miller.