Bishop’s University

Astrophysics at Bishop’s University Enters a New Era with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory

The new Vera C. Rubin Observatory telescope will transform our understanding of the Universe, with help from astrophysicists at Bishop’s.

Sherbrooke, QC – June 23th, 2025 – From the summit of Cerro Pachón in the Andes Mountains of Chile, a new eye on the sky is now poised to change our view of the cosmos. The NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, with its imposing telescope equipped with an 8.5-meter mirror and the Guinness World Record’s largest digital camera ever built, has now begun to sweep across the sky each night. This new $500 million telescope aims to create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition movie of the night sky over years. “The telescope and camera are so sensitive that, in theory, it could detect the faint glow of a candle at the distance of the Moon” says Dr. John Ruan, a Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy and Canada Research Chair at Bishop’s University. The Rubin Observatory is named after the late female astronomer Vera Rubin, whose pioneering measurements of the rotation of the Milky Way provided some of the earliest and most convincing evidence that our galaxy is primarily composed of elusive ‘invisible’ matter, which we now call ‘Dark Matter’.

Over the next ten years, the Rubin Observatory will image the full southern sky a total of 800 times, generating 500 petabytes of data, thus becoming one of the largest scientific datasets in history. This firehose of data is expected to provide insights on the nature of Dark Energy, a mysterious pressure causing the expansion of our Universe to accelerate. The Rubin Observatory is also expected to discover tens of thousands of near-Earth asteroids in our Solar System, some of which may be potentially on hazardously-close paths with Earth. Finally, the movie of the night sky resulting from repeated snapshots over will uncover exotic cosmic explosions, such as those from the collision of dead stars. Although these studies will transform our understanding of the Universe, “it is almost certain that the most exciting discoveries will be completely new phenomena that we did not expect”, says astrophysicist Dr. Weixiang Yu, a Canadian Rubin Postdoctoral Fellow at Bishop’s University.  

A group of stars and galaxies.
This image shows a small section of NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s total view of the Virgo cluster of galaxies. Visible are two prominent spiral galaxies (lower right), three merging galaxies (upper right), several groups of distant galaxies, many stars in the Milky Way galaxy and more. Image credit: NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Original Image Link here.

Canadian astronomers are playing key roles in this novel scientific odyssey. Teams across Canada are helping build the critical software and computing infrastructure that will transform raw images from the Rubin Observatory into groundbreaking discoveries. Dr. Ruan’s research group at Bishop’s leads the only team in Quebec contributing to Rubin’s data analysis software, by developing fast software tools that can overcome the immense challenges posed to researchers by the sheer volume of data that will be generated. This contribution provides Canadian researchers access to proprietary Rubin Observatory data before it becomes public, giving Canadians a valuable head start on some of Rubin’s most exciting scientific breakthroughs.

Headlined image caption: The night sky dazzles over Rubin Observatory in this shot from October 2024. The Milky Way sprawls overhead in the waning light of sunset. Venus shines brightly on the left, while Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan–ATLAS) appears just above the observatory at centre. Image credit: H.Stockebrand/RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/DOE/NSF/AURA. Original image link here.

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