A powerful new telescope will usher in a new era of cosmic discovery, but in a political climate vastly different from when it was named for a once overlooked female astronomer.

As the Vera C. Rubin Observatory surveys the night sky, astrophysicists expect to unlock the secrets of dark matter, dark energy and cosmic phenomena that go “bang!”

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory will make the study of stars and galaxies more like the big data-sorting exercises of contemporary genetics and particle physics.

A powerful new telescope will usher in a new era of cosmic discovery, but in a political climate vastly different from when it was named for a once overlooked female astronomer.