"This is the first stellar stream detected from Rubin,"
"And it's just a precursor for all of the many, many features we'll find like this."
"despite all of this intense study, no one had ever found this stellar stream"
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is producing deep images with its massive camera before the formal survey begins. A test image revealed a faint stellar stream extending from the spiral galaxy Messier 61, implying that M61 gravitationally disrupted and stripped a much smaller companion. Messier 61, a starburst galaxy in the Virgo Cluster discovered in 1779, hosts numerous supernovae and high star-formation activity. Observations from powerful telescopes including James Webb and Hubble have intensely studied M61, yet the faint tidal stream remained undetected until Rubin's new wide-field, high-sensitivity imagery. Many similar faint features are expected to be found.
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