Rubin Tracks Skyscraper-Size Asteroids, Failed Supernovas, and Interstellar Visitors
The Vera C.
维拉 C.
Rubin Observatory sits at the summit of Cerro Pachón, accessible by a 35-kilometer drive on winding mountain roads.
鲁宾天文台位于 Cerro Pachón 山顶，沿着蜿蜒的山路行驶 35 公里即可到达。
NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/A.
NSF-DOE 鲁宾天文台/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/A。
Pizarro D.
皮萨罗 D.
Over the years, anticipation has built for the start of observations at the Vera C.
多年来，人们对维拉 C 观测的开始充满期待。
Rubin Observatory in the mountains of the Atacama Desert in Chile.
鲁宾天文台位于智利阿塔卡马沙漠山区。
Originally imagined in the mid-1990s as the Dark Matter Telescope, Rubin is designed to study our constantly moving and changing universe in greater detail than ever before.
Rubin 最初是在 20 世纪 90 年代中期设想的暗物质望远镜，旨在比以往更详细地研究我们不断移动和变化的宇宙。
Once every few days for a decade, Rubin will take images of the entire night sky over the Southern Hemisphere, creating the world’s largest time-lapse movie.
十年来，每隔几天，鲁宾就会拍摄一次南半球的整个夜空图像，创作出世界上最大的延时电影。
In Rubin’s first year alone, scientists expect the observatory to find 1 million undiscovered asteroids — as many as have been documented in the previous 200 years of human history — as well as thousands of comets and billions of stars and galaxies.
仅在鲁宾的第一年，科学家们就预计该天文台将发现 100 万颗未被发现的小行星——与人类过去 200 年历史中记录的数量一样多——以及数千颗彗星和数十亿颗恒星和星系。
“We’ve never had this kind of explosion of discovery within astronomy,” said Sarah Greenstreet , an astronomer at the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory.
“天文学领域从未出现过如此爆炸性的发现，”国家光学红外天文学研究实验室的天文学家莎拉·格林斯特里特 (Sarah Greenstreet) 说。
A little over a decade after the first stone was laid to build Rubin’s home on the mountaintop of Cerro Pachón, the observatory is now a reality, outfitted with a telescope with three mirrors, the largest of which measures 8.4 meters across, and a car-size digital camera, the largest on Earth.
鲁宾在塞罗帕雄山顶的家奠基十多年后，天文台现已成为现实，配备了带有三个镜子的望远镜（其中最大的直径为 8.4 米）和汽车大小的数码相机（地球上最大的数码相机）。
It has begun collecting preliminary images.
它已开始收集初步图像。
“It almost doesn’t feel real that we’re actually getting data from Rubin,” said Matt Nicholl , an astrophysicist at Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland.
北爱尔兰贝尔法斯特女王大学的天体物理学家马特·尼科尔说：“我们实际上从鲁宾那里获取数据几乎感觉不真实。”
“To see stuff being found is a dream come true.”
“看到东西被找到就是梦想成真。”
Astronomers are poring over the initial data, and they’re pleased with what they’re finding: rapidly spinning asteroids; myriad exploding stars; and even a rare glimpse of an object passing by from another solar system.
天文学家正在仔细研究最初的数据，他们对自己的发现感到满意：快速旋转的小行星；无数爆炸的星星；甚至还难得一睹来自另一个太阳系的物体经过。
“It’s really living up to expectations,” said Michael Frazer , an astronomer at Curtin University in Australia.
“这确实不负众望，”澳大利亚科廷大学天文学家迈克尔·弗雷泽说。
As the observatory goes through its final tuning, Rubin’s images have not yet reached the sharpness that scientists expect.
当天文台进行最后的调整时，鲁宾的图像尚未达到科学家预期的清晰度。
But some Rubin science is less dependent on image quality, including its searches for asteroids and comets.
但鲁宾的一些科学研究不太依赖图像质量，包括寻找小行星和彗星。
This means that, even in the images taken so far, astronomers have been able to make discoveries.
这意味着，即使在迄今为止拍摄的图像中，天文学家也能够做出发现。
In June 2025, Rubin released a set of images taken during its “first light,” including photographs of 1,500 new asteroids .
2025 年 6 月，鲁宾发布了一组在“第一缕曙光”期间拍摄的图像，其中包括 1,500 颗新小行星的照片。
In January, researchers announced that 19 of those asteroids were spinning especially rapidly.
一月份，研究人员宣布其中 19 颗小行星的旋转速度特别快。
The quickest of these “superfast rotators,” an asteroid with a diameter almost twice the height of the Empire State Building, called 2025 MN 45 , completes a revolution every 1.88 minutes.
这些“超高速自转体”中速度最快的是一颗直径几乎是帝国大厦高度两倍的小行星，称为 2025 MN 45，每 1.88 分钟完成一周。
The 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time will alert scientists to transient objects in the night sky.
为期十年的时空遗产调查将提醒科学家注意夜空中的短暂物体。
It is expected to find millions of new asteroids.
预计将发现数百万颗新的小行星。
NSF–DOE Vera C.
NSF-DOE 维拉 C.
Rubin Observatory
鲁宾天文台
While scientists have spotted asteroids that spin faster, they’ve tended to be much smaller — between 10 and a few hundred meters.
虽然科学家们发现了自转速度更快的小行星，但它们往往要小得多——在 10 米到几百米之间。
For asteroids the size of 2025 MN 45 , about 700 meters (2,300 feet) across on average, “we didn’t expect we would find something [spinning] faster than 10 minutes,” said Dmitrii Vavilov of the University of Washington, a co-author on the discovery paper.
对于大小为 2025 MN 45 、平均宽度约为 700 米（2,300 英尺）的小行星，“我们没想到会发现比 10 分钟更快的东西，”该发现论文的合著者、华盛顿大学的德米特里·瓦维洛夫 (Dmitrii Vavilov) 说。
Most asteroids of this size are thought to be piles of rubble, conglomerations of rock loosely held together by gravity.
大多数这种大小的小行星被认为是一堆碎石，是由重力松散地聚集在一起的岩石聚集体。
But 2025 MN 45 must have a more solid structure; otherwise its own spin would tear it apart.
但2025 MN 45必须有更坚固的结构；否则它自己的旋转会把它撕裂。
It might be the fragmented chunk of a long-dead planetary core from the early solar system, broken in a collision and left to spin wildly through space for the last 4.5 billion years, said Greenstreet, the paper’s lead author.
该论文的主要作者格林斯特里特表示，它可能是来自早期太阳系的一个早已死亡的行星核心的碎片，在一次碰撞中破碎，并在过去 45 亿年里在太空中疯狂旋转。
Rubin’s vast pool of asteroids could help scientists piece together the history of our solar system.
鲁宾的大量小行星可以帮助科学家拼凑出太阳系的历史。
Astronomers think that the planets were much closer together when they first formed but that they have migrated over time to their current orbits.
天文学家认为，行星最初形成时距离更近，但随着时间的推移，它们已经迁移到当前的轨道。
Finding asteroids in certain patterns of motion, such as an orbit in sync with Neptune’s, could help us trace this migration, Greenstreet said.
格林斯特里特说，寻找某些运动模式的小行星，例如与海王星同步的轨道，可以帮助我们追踪这种迁移。
Stephen Smartt, of the University of Oxford, serves as scientific lead for Lasair, a data broker that distributes alerts about changes to the night sky.
牛津大学的斯蒂芬·斯马特 (Stephen Smartt) 担任 Lasair 的科学主管，Lasair 是一家数据经纪人，负责发布有关夜空变化的警报。
Scientists also hope that Rubin will supercharge efforts to spot small asteroids, those that are just a few meters in size, before they hit Earth.
科学家们还希望鲁宾能够加大力度在小型小行星撞击地球之前发现它们，这些小行星的大小只有几米。
These asteroids, known as imminent impactors, mostly burn up in our atmosphere, producing brilliant fireballs in the sky.
这些小行星被称为即将发生的撞击物，大部分在我们的大气层中燃烧，在天空中产生明亮的火球。
Recent simulations show that Rubin might find about one of these a year .
最近的模拟表明，鲁宾一年可能会发现其中一个。
What’s more, “it should see them a couple of days in advance, instead of a couple of hours,” as current telescopes do, said Frazer, who led the simulation work.
领导模拟工作的弗雷泽说，更重要的是，“它应该提前几天看到它们，而不是像当前的望远镜那样需要几个小时”。
That could give astronomers enough time to travel to the location of the impact and watch it unfold, or to look for any meteorites that make it to the ground.
这可以让天文学家有足够的时间前往撞击地点并观察撞击的展开，或者寻找撞击地面的陨石。
“We can send people out and put a whole bunch of sensors down, from cameras to infrasound,” he said.
“我们可以派人出去，放置一整套传感器，从摄像机到次声波，”他说。
It will also be possible to alert members of the public to the event so they can watch the flash in the sky.
它还可以提醒公众该事件，以便他们可以观看天空中的闪光。
“We can tell people to go look outside, because we know there’s going to be a beautiful fireball,” Frazer said.
弗雷泽说：“我们可以告诉人们向外看，因为我们知道将会出现一个美丽的火球。”
Rubin will spend its first year creating a baseline map of the night sky, and scientists will compare subsequent images to this template.
鲁宾将在第一年创建夜空基线图，科学家将随后的图像与该模板进行比较。
An automated alert system will ping them when it comes across a change, such as an exploding star or a flying asteroid.
当遇到变化时，例如爆炸的恒星或飞行的小行星，自动警报系统会通知他们。
Rubin tested out its alert system for the first time on February 24, 2026.
Rubin 于 2026 年 2 月 24 日首次测试其警报系统。
By photographing a patch of sky for which previous surveys had already built up a sufficient template, Rubin was able to ping 800,000 alerts in a single night.
通过拍摄之前的调查已经建立了足够模板的一片天空，鲁宾能够在一个晚上发出 800,000 个警报。
“Everything that changed, appeared, or disappeared was cataloged and triggered an alert,” said Stephen Smartt of the University of Oxford.
牛津大学的史蒂芬·斯马特说：“所有发生变化、出现或消失的事物都会被编目并触发警报。”
Smartt serves as scientific lead for Lasair , one of the seven data brokers that will help astronomers sift through Rubin’s vast data haul for discoveries.
Smartt 担任 Lasair 的科学主管，Lasair 是帮助天文学家筛选鲁宾大量数据以寻找新发现的七个数据经纪人之一。
The camera, seen here mounted to the telescope, weighs about 3,000 kilograms.
图中安装在望远镜上的相机重约 3,000 公斤。
You would need hundreds of ultra-high-definition TV screens to display just one of its images.
您需要数百个超高清电视屏幕才能显示其中的一幅图像。
RubinObs/NSF/DOE/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/T.
RubinObs/NSF/DOE/NOIRLab/SLAC/AURA/T。
Lange
朗格
Once the full survey begins this summer, Rubin is expected to produce 7 million alerts and 20 terabytes of data a night.
今年夏天全面调查开始后，Rubin 预计每晚将产生 700 万条警报和 20 TB 数据。
For just one example of how this firehose of data is expected to transform our understanding of the cosmos, consider supernovas, the brilliant death throes of exhausted stars.
这股数据将如何改变我们对宇宙的理解，这只是一个例子，可以考虑一下超新星，即耗尽恒星的辉煌垂死挣扎。
Back in the late 1990s, two teams of astronomers used observations of under 100 “Type Ia” supernovas to make a revolutionary discovery about our universe: Its expansion is accelerating due to a still-mysterious force called dark energy.
早在 20 世纪 90 年代末，两个天文学家团队通过对不到 100 颗“Ia 型”超新星的观测，对我们的宇宙做出了革命性的发现：由于一种仍然神秘的暗能量力量，宇宙正在加速膨胀。
Once Rubin is fully up and running, researchers expect to find 250,000 such supernovas in a year.
一旦鲁宾完全启动并运行，研究人员预计将在一年内发现 25 万颗此类超新星。
Sarah Greenstreet, an astronomer at the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory, hopes to use incoming data on millions of asteroids to learn more about the formation of our solar system.
国家光学红外天文学研究实验室的天文学家莎拉·格林斯特里特希望利用数百万个小行星的传入数据来更多地了解太阳系的形成。
Scientists hope that Rubin’s supernova data can help resolve the Hubble tension , the observation that the recent universe appears to be expanding faster than predicted when compared to the early universe.
科学家希望鲁宾的超新星数据能够帮助解决哈勃张力，即与早期宇宙相比，近期宇宙的膨胀速度似乎比预测的要快。
“We want to collect huge samples of Type Ia supernovae to probe this acceleration in much greater detail,” Smartt said.
“我们希望收集 Ia 型超新星的大量样本，以更详细地探测这种加速现象，”斯玛特说。
Smartt is also interested in finding failed supernovas, which occur when stars collapse in on themselves rather than exploding outward.
斯玛特还对寻找失败的超新星感兴趣，这种超新星发生在恒星自身塌陷而不是向外爆炸时。
They might have their origins, paradoxically, in the most massive stars.
矛盾的是，它们可能起源于最大质量的恒星。
In February 2026, scientists pinpointed a possible candidate in the Andromeda galaxy .
2026 年 2 月，科学家在仙女座星系中确定了一个可能的候选者。
Rubin, with the exquisite detail of its images, is well placed to find these types of events, in which stars disappear in explosions that can be too faint for other surveys to see.
鲁宾凭借其图像的精致细节，非常适合发现此类事件，在这些事件中，恒星在爆炸中消失，而这些事件对于其他巡天来说太微弱而无法看到。
“It goes down 100 times fainter than other sky surveys,” Smartt said.
“它的亮度比其他天空观测要暗 100 倍，”斯玛特说。
Rubin can also be used to track interesting and unusual objects passing through our solar system.
鲁宾还可以用来追踪穿过太阳系的有趣和不寻常的物体。
It’s traditionally been difficult to catch such speedy travelers, at least without a survey that can pick out very faint objects at a rapid pace.
传统上很难捕捉到如此快速的旅行者，至少在没有能够快速识别出非常微弱物体的调查的情况下是如此。
Scientists have only ever observed three such interstellar objects — asteroids and comets that were ejected from other stars and fired into our vicinity — giving us insight into material from other solar systems.
科学家们只观察到了三个这样的星际物体——从小行星和彗星，它们是从其他恒星中喷射出来并射入我们附近的——这让我们能够深入了解来自其他太阳系的物质。
Rubin has already proved its ability to spot them.
鲁宾已经证明了其发现它们的能力。
Scientists announced the observation of an interstellar comet called 3I/ATLAS on July 1, 2025.
科学家宣布于 2025 年 7 月 1 日观测到一颗名为 3I/ATLAS 的星际彗星。
They detected it without Rubin, via a network of four other telescopes that forms the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), which usually finds objects formed nearby.
他们在没有鲁宾的情况下，通过其他四台望远镜组成的网络探测到了它，该网络形成了小行星陆地撞击最后警报系统（ATLAS），该系统通常会发现附近形成的物体。
Other astronomers followed up by looking through Rubin’s initial data and discovered that the observatory had also detected 3I/ATLAS, 10 days earlier .
其他天文学家随后查看了鲁宾的初始数据，发现该天文台在10天前也探测到了3I/ATLAS。
If a similar visitor from afar appears in Rubin’s data during the survey, astronomers will receive an alert.
如果在巡天期间鲁宾的数据中出现类似的远方访客，天文学家就会收到警报。
Scientists don’t know exactly how many more interstellar objects Rubin will find, but they expect it to find at least some.
科学家们并不确切知道鲁宾还会发现多少星际物体，但他们预计它至少会发现一些。
“It could be five to 500,” depending on how often these objects are ejected from their home systems, said Rosemary Dorsey , an astrophysicist at the University of Helsinki in Finland.
芬兰赫尔辛基大学天体物理学家罗斯玛丽·多尔西 (Rosemary Dorsey) 表示，“可能是 5 到 500 个”，具体取决于这些物体从其所在系统中弹出的频率。
“I am optimistic there will be some, but if there aren’t, then that is a really interesting problem.”
“我乐观地认为会有一些，但如果没有，那就是一个非常有趣的问题。”
One way that astronomers determine the distance to an object in space is by studying its light.
天文学家确定太空物体距离的一种方法是研究它的光。
As light makes its way toward Earth while traveling through the expanding universe, it shifts toward the red side of the electromagnetic spectrum.
当光在穿过膨胀的宇宙时向地球传播时，它会向电磁波谱的红色一侧移动。
The higher the redshift, the more stretched the light is, and the farther its source is from Earth.
红移越高，光线越被拉伸，其光源距离地球越远。
Rubin’s preview data allowed scientists to test how well it could measure this light via a technique called photometric redshift, which will let it map galaxies across the universe to probe dark energy and dark matter.
鲁宾的预览数据使科学家能够测试它通过一种称为光度红移的技术测量这种光的能力，这将使其能够绘制整个宇宙的星系图，以探测暗能量和暗物质。
“The preview data tells us how accurate those photometric redshifts are going to be,” said Kristen Dage , an astronomer at Curtin University.
科廷大学天文学家克里斯汀·达奇说：“预览数据告诉我们这些光度红移的准确度。”
Rubin performed at least as well as other cutting-edge telescopes, Dage said, but it will measure the redshift of many more galaxies, about 4 billion of the 20 billion galaxies it will find.
达格表示，鲁宾望远镜的表现至少与其他尖端望远镜一样好，但它将测量更多星系的红移，它将发现的 200 亿个星系中约有 40 亿个。
Dage expects that this data will also help scientists study fast radio bursts (FRBs), bright, unexplained flashes of radio waves in the sky possibly linked to highly magnetized stars called magnetars.
达格预计，这些数据还将帮助科学家研究快速射电爆发（FRB），即天空中明亮、无法解释的无线电波闪光，可能与称为磁星的高度磁化恒星有关。
While Rubin cannot detect radio waves, photometric redshift data will help scientists work out the distances to FRBs if they can be sourced to a host galaxy Rubin can measure, which could help scientists determine the processes that trigger them.
虽然鲁宾无法探测到无线电波，但光度红移数据将帮助科学家计算出快速射电暴的距离（如果这些数据可以来源于鲁宾可以测量的宿主星系），这可以帮助科学家确定触发它们的过程。
All of this is just a smattering of what scientists are hoping to explore when Rubin comes online.
所有这些只是鲁宾上线后科学家们希望探索的一小部分。
With it, a new era of astronomy is set to begin.
有了它，天文学的新时代即将开始。
“Rubin is going to be putting out so much data, so many alerts every night, that everybody’s going to struggle to keep up with [the] information,” Frazer said — a challenge, but a delightful problem to have.
弗雷泽说：“鲁宾每晚都会发布如此多的数据、如此多的警报，每个人都将很难跟上信息。”这是一个挑战，但也是一个令人愉快的问题。
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