25/06/2025
Today, the world will get its first glimpse at the cosmos through the eyes of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which is perched atop Cerro Pachón, a nearly 9,000-foot peak in Chile. The Rubin Observatory is kicking off a decade-long “movie” shoot: With the world’s largest camera ever constructed and one of the most powerful telescopes, the observatory will capture vast swaths of the visible sky, providing a super-crisp, unprecedented “time-lapse” of the universe.
But who is the observatory’s namesake astronomer?
Vera Rubin is best known for presenting the first sound evidence of dark matter—an elusive substance that makes up more than 80 percent of our universe, yet doesn’t interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation, making it impossible to glimpse directly through a telescope.
Rubin became a cosmological giant against the odds, illuminating a path for future female astronomers. Rubin, who passed away at age 88 in 2016, dreamed of space from an early age, constructing a telescope out of cardboard as a child. Yet as early as high school, she was urged to avoid a career in science. Rubin ignored this advice and attended Vassar College in New York because the first nationally recognized female astronomer, Maria Mitchell, had taught there in the institution’s early years. She went on to juggle family and her studies, earning her Master’s degree at Cornell University, where she studied under Richard Feynman and others, and then a doctorate from Georgetown University in 1954 while caring for four children.
