‘Tails’ have so far been associated with comets, but months after the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s debut, the notion ought to change. Perched atop the Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes, it overlooks the Atacama Desert. Yet to start its official role in scouring the sky for galaxies, its first test image has given us a glimpse of what’s to come. A stellar stream, which is a trail of light, has been found by its colossal camera in the Messier 61 galaxy. This is just the beginning of the promise it held of changing cosmic history.
Messier 61 was first spotted in the Virgo Cluster of galaxies back in 1779. This galaxy is a starburst galaxy, teeming with cosmic activity, including the birth of new stars and the explosions of countless supernovae. Messier 61 is the equivalent of “The Starry Night” by Van Gogh for astronomers, a treat for the eyes.
The Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope provided images of this galaxy, providing details about its structure. However, these telescopes didn’t spot the stellar stream that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has brought to light.
After scrutinizing images captured by the world’s largest digital camera—the Observatory’s USP—the team filtered out excess light, revealing the bright tail that made the picture special. The stellar stream is 55 kiloparsecs, or 180,000 light-years, long—one of the longest ever discovered. Astronomers speculate that a dwarf galaxy was shredded apart by the gravity of the Messier 61 galaxy, explaining the high rate of star formation and other abnormalities found in this celestial body.
Rubin’s first outing is a fitting appetizer to the main course of cosmic extravaganza that awaits. The Observatory will capture light from 20 billion galaxies, which is a record. “The expectation is that every single galaxy should be surrounded by these streams. It’s a fundamental part of how the galaxies are made,” Aaron Romanowsky, an astronomer at San Jose State University in California, and an author of the study, says. “We just need to look fainter, and that’s the hope with Rubin.”
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