This 3,200-megapixel space camera is so powerful it’s already revealing secrets from the galaxy's edge

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has just switched on its new space camera – the most powerful digital camera ever built.

With a staggering 3,200 megapixels, this space camera is designed to capture more detail, from farther away, than anything that came before it.

And it’s already delivering: the first images reveal clouds of interstellar gas, newborn stars, and galaxies drifting at the very edge of the observable universe.

But this is just the beginning.

DISCOVER SBX CARS – The global premium auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie

A 10-year movie of the universe

Perched 8,684ft above sea level on a mountaintop in Chile’s Atacama Desert, the Rubin Observatory’s custom-built camera sits at the heart of a 27ft-wide telescope.

Every night, it takes up to 1,000 rapid-fire, 30-second exposures – enough to scan the entire southern sky in ultra-high resolution every three to four days.

It also generates an incredible 20TB of data each night. Over 10 years, that will add up to more than 60,000TB as part of Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

This sky-mapping mission will help astronomers catalog 20 billion galaxies, 17 billion stars, 10 million supernovae, and millions of smaller solar system objects like asteroids and comets.

But what really sets the camera apart is that it doesn’t just take still images – it watches space in motion.

By repeatedly scanning the sky, it captures what astronomers call the time domain: how cosmic objects change, flare, move, or explode over time.

That means catching rare, fast, or violent events – like black holes ripping stars apart or new celestial objects we haven’t even discovered yet.

This space camera might actually find Planet Nine

Over just its first three years of operation, the camera is expected to discover between 10 and 100 times more solar system objects than all previous surveys combined.

Some will be ancient fragments from the early days of planet formation – others could be far more exotic.

Scientists expect it to spot interstellar visitors, like rogue asteroids or comets ejected from other star systems. 

And then there’s Planet Nine, the hypothetical giant planet believed to be hiding beyond Neptune.

If it exists, there’s a 70–80 percent chance the camera will capture it directly, or at least detect it indirectly by analyzing how nearby objects are mysteriously clustered.

Unlike this probe from China, which took an actual selfie on its way into deep space.

But this camera isn’t just a lens – it’s a scientific time machine.

Its deep-sky images will help unlock some of the universe’s greatest mysteries, including the nature of dark energy – the force driving the universe to expand faster and faster.

By observing how massive structures bend light in a process called gravitational lensing, it will also help map the universe’s hidden dark matter filaments, the invisible scaffolding of galaxies.

The data could give physicists their best shot yet at uncovering the forces shaping our universe, and maybe even reveal entirely new physics.

From rogue asteroids to newborn galaxies, the 3,200-megapixel Rubin camera is already revealing secrets that were once beyond the reach of human eyes.

It might even be better at detecting asteroids than the European Space Agency effort known as Flyeye.

And with a decade of sky-scanning ahead, we’re about to witness the universe unfold – in ultra-HD!

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie