Scientists have unveiled the world’s biggest digital camera, capturing the broadest-ever images of the universe.
Photos from the Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, show the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is nearing completion.
The 3,200-megapixel camera is powerful enough to spot a golf ball from 15 miles away. It is around the size of a small SUV, and its lens has a diameter of over five feet.
After completion, it will click digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from the Rubin Observatory atop a mountain in Chile called Cerro Pachon.
It will produce a broad, deep and fast survey of the night sky, cataloguing the most number of stars and galaxies ever observed.
The mechanical components of the camera are now together, but the camera isn’t fully complete yet.
SLAC invited photographers to the clean room at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, where the camera is kept to see the humongous ‘photogenic structure’ for the first time.
The camera website reads, ‘The Rubin Observatory LSST Camera is the largest digital camera ever constructed.’
‘At about 5.5 feet (1.65 metres) by 9.8 feet (3 metres), it’s roughly the size of a small car and weighs almost 6200 lbs (2800 kg).’
Visitors to SLC saw the impressive focal plane – which contains 189 sensors known as CCDs – through the camera’s lenses. Each CCD packs more pixels than a single iPhone.
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The focal plane on this camera is similar to the imaging sensor of a smartphone.
However, this focal plane is more than two feet wide and contains 189 individual sensors, producing 3,200-megapixel images.
