A few days ago, the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory announced the world’s largest digital camera. This astronomical digital camera is 1.65 meters high and has a resolution of 3.2 billion pixels.
The technicians are finalizing the last operations at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Once done, the world’s largest digital camera will be shipped to Chile. It will be installed on a telescope in the Andes. Over the next ten years, this digital camera will participate in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Simply put, this camera will help scholars to get images from 20 billion galaxies. Although the camera is not finished yet, all its mechanical parts have now been assembled within a frame for the first time.
Characteristics of the world’s largest digital camera
The LSST camera is a digital camera that works similarly to other digital cameras but is much larger. With the help of its 189 sensors, the camera can capture light from stars and other objects and converts it into electrical signals. Each sensor is about 16mm in size, and the camera has a total of 3.2 gigapixels of resolution and can capture lunar dust particles. Its largest lens has a diameter of 1.57 meters, the largest ever.
Vincent Riot, project manager for the camera at LSST, said the camera’s sensors are extremely expensive to manufacture, and any misalignment could easily damage them.
The camera will also have one last upgrade this year: the technicians will add a modern cooling system. This digital camera will be ready for final testing before shipping to Chile in May 2023.
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is an astronomical observatory currently under construction in Chile. Its main task is to conduct synchronous astronomical surveys.
