Move Over James Webb! New 3 Ton LSST Camera Will Map The Entire Sky With Wide...

[G.L.R.]

Inside the World's Largest Digital Camera

October 23, 2022



Next year the LSST  Camera will start a decade-long project to map the entire sky, and help  answer some of the universe's biggest questions.

Scientists in Northern California are putting finishing touches on the world's largest digital camera. They recently took off the lens cap and invited CNET to take a rare look inside. Engineers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have spent the last seven years building the LSST, camera. The camera is the size of a small car and weighs about three tons, and at five feet across... The 3,200 megapixel camera, powerful enough to spot a golf ball 15 miles away, will be the heart of a new telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in the mountains of Chile... Scientists predict the LSST camera will  help them discover 17 billion new stars, as well as 6 million new  objects in our own solar system.

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Why construct a telescope when you can just take pictures with a wide lens camera?

Where the recently launched James Webb telescope  takes a deep, narrow look into space, the LSST camera will take a much  wider view. Once in operation it'll image a piece of sky seven times the  width of the full moon every 15 seconds, creating an entire panorama of  the sky every night...  "It enables us to ask really big questions. What is the universe made of? What is the nature of dark matter and dark energy?" Scientists at SLAC will spend the next few months running final tests on  the camera. In May 2023 they plan to pack it up and put it on a chartered Boeing 747 for the flight to Santiago, Chile. It'll then be placed on a train to reach the observatory on top of the mountain Cerro Pachón.

Inside the World's Largest Digital Camera - CNET
https://www.cnet.com/science/inside-the-worlds-largest-digital-camera