Trail-Blazing Astronomer Vera Rubin Honoured #SpaceSaturday
via Astronomy Now
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, being built to probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy, has been renamed the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, or VRO, in honour of the late Carnegie astronomer whose studies of galactic rotation confirmed the existence of dark matter.
“Vera challenged conventional thinking and transformed our understanding of the universe,” said Carnegie Science President Eric D. Isaacs. “We are proud that this next-generation observatory will be named in recognition of her contributions 50 years after she and her Carnegie colleague Kent Ford first published their landmark work on the rotation curves of galaxies, providing clear evidence for the existence of dark matter.”