When it’s finished, the LSST Large Synoptic Survey Telescope 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera (3.2 gigapixels), designed by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will be the largest digital camera ever made. The camera just got its approval for a final design phase. Image courtesy LSST Project
Over the course of an entire year, the LSST should produce six million gigs of imagery data, all of which will be publicly archived.
Images courtesy of the LSST Collaboration
Camera section
The camera will have huge field of view, capturing images that cover 49 times the area of the Moon. Creating an unprecedented public archive of data – about 6 million gigabytes per year, the equivalent of shooting roughly 800,000 images with a regular eight-megapixel digital camera every night.
Suzanne Jacoby with the LSST focal plane array scale model.
189 sensors and over 3 tons (2.7 tonnes) of components will be tightly packed into its cylindrical body. Work has already begun on the telescope’s 8.4-meter (27.5-foot) primary mirror, at the final site of the observatory on the Cerro Pachón ridge in northern Chile.
LSST in profile
LSST Facilities Building with simulated night sky.
via Stanford
source LSST
Leave A Comment