Core Insights - The largest digital camera ever, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, has released its first cosmic images, capturing unprecedented details of millions of distant stars and galaxies, as well as thousands of previously unseen asteroids [2][3] - The observatory's upcoming "Legacy Survey of Space and Time" project is set to launch in late 2025 and will last for 10 years, promising significant astronomical discoveries [2] - In a short test observation period, the observatory discovered 2,104 previously unknown asteroids, including seven near-Earth asteroids that pose no threat to Earth [2] Group 1 - The Rubin Observatory's images reveal faint details such as gas and dust clouds in the Trifid Nebula and Lagoon Nebula, showcasing the observatory's capability to capture previously unobserved phenomena [2][3] - The observatory is located at the summit of Cerro Pachón in the Atacama Desert, Chile, at an altitude of over 2,600 meters, providing optimal conditions for night sky observation [3] - The core of the observatory features a digital camera the size of a car, with a resolution of 32 million pixels, producing images so large that they require 400 ultra-high-definition televisions to display in full [3] Group 2 - Over the next decade, the Rubin Observatory plans to conduct comprehensive scans of the southern hemisphere night sky every three nights, aiming to reveal approximately 20 billion galaxies, 17 billion stars in the Milky Way, 10 million supernova events, and millions of small bodies within the solar system [3]