The more I learn, the more I sense “wonder all around,” even in deep space far from our humble planet. American astronomer Vera C. Rubin (1928-2016) has named a few of these stunning, new understandings about those far, far away regions.

Like dark matter spinning throughout the universe.

And how galaxies whirl around in space and grow.

While still in graduate school, Rubin proved that the galaxies within solar systems clump together, instead of scattering randomly. But she’s best known for her pioneering work on the rotation rates of disc galaxies (like our comparatively little Milky Way). In her study of their rotation speeds, she uncovered the discrepancy between scientists’ rotation rate predictions and what they actually observed—a key piece of evidence for the existence of dark matter.

Vera Rubin was an expert indeed. She received her Bachelor degree in Astronomy at Vasser College (Phi Beta Kappa), a Master’s degree at Cornell, and a Ph.D. at Georgetown University. She held several academic positions, including the Carnegie Institution of Scienc

This picture of the Rubin Observatory also shows the center of the Milky Way above it.

e, and as an initiating faculty member of the Vatican Observatory Summer School (1986). She was the first female astronomer permitted to observe at California’s Palomar Observatory. She retired in 2014 from the Carnegie Institute as Senior Fellow of Astronomy in the department that deals with Earth’s magnetism.

Rubin has been a rebel from the beginning, and experts debate different viewpoints on her findings. Experts have named her work as “ushering in a Copernican-scale change” in theories about the cosmos.¹

We shouldn’t be surprised that an observatory has been named after her. It’s in Chile and has been called a “next-generation facility,”² since it can see farther than previously thought possible for any human being. Even though it’s still under construction, it began operating in June of 2025, and got its First Look on June 23^rd of this year.

That observatory’s First Look located “a swarm of new asteroids”³ within this solar system, and then moved on to larger realms. There, it found two nebulae (huge star-forming regions; see top picture) inside the Sagittarius constellation. They are a whopping 4,000 to 5,000 light years⁴ away from Earth. That’s almost 6 trillion miles times 4,000 or 5,000.

Wow! Wonder all around.

Yours in exploring and learning,

Betsy Schwarzentraub

¹ – New York Times quote cited in Wikipedia.com.

² – https://www.nsf.gov/news/first-imagery-nsf-doe-vera-c-rubin-observatory

³ – https://rubinobservatory.org

⁴ – Remember “light years?” Just one of them is the distance that light can travel in an entire year—so that’s 5.88 trillion miles.