Kaya! ABC environment reporter Peter de Kruijff here and I've never been more excited to talk about gassy clouds.
The first handful of shots both inside and outside our galaxy from the world's biggest camera, perched on a Chilean mountain in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, were released this week — and they're stunners.
The vast astronomical landscapes of swirling galaxies and gas clouds upon layers and layers of orange, yellow and blue dots have a painting-like quality.
Jonti Horner, astrophysicist at the University of Southern Queensland, said the detail of the images was "breathtaking".
"Even the furthest you zoom in, it's pin-sharp," he said.
Other high-tech telescopes can capture similarly detailed images but not across such vast spaces.
So how does the Rubin Observatory camera do it?
There's a telescope with an 8.4 metre-wide mirror that feeds light into the camera, which itself is large in physical size and its resolution.
The camera resolution accommodates a whole lot of pixels, which are the tiny dots that make up a digital photo. Generally speaking, the more pixels you've got, the higher your image resolution.
An entry level smart phone's camera has about 12 megapixels, a high-end digital camera has about 100MP while the Rubin Observatory camera has a whopping 3,200MP.
Weighing in at 3,000 kilograms, that's nearly 1kg for every megapixel!
While the images captured by this massive piece of kit are definitely cool, there's a whole lot of research that will also come: from dark matter and Planet 9 to mapping asteroids that may venture close to Earth.
Elsewhere in science in the past week, I spoke to an entomologist who found the mummified remains of the world's only eyeless wasp in a Nullarbor cave.
My colleague Zoe Kean looked into the cetacean skincare and the cultural phenomenon of orcas modifying kelp to massage each other.
And science reporter Jacinta Bowler examined the trend of anti-anxiety drug prescriptions and dogs for the podcast series What the Dogs?!
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