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. At the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, technicians are completing work on the world's largest digital camera. The camera will be shipped to Chile and installed on a telescope in the Andes, and over the next 10 years, it will participate in the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), an astronomical treasure trove of images of some 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.
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, it captures 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 and can capture lunar dust particles. Its largest lens has a diameter of 1.57 meters, the largest ever of its kind.
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: a modern cooling system will be installed. The camera will then be complete and 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 or the "Spatiotemporal Heritage Survey". The observatory is located at an altitude of 2682 meters in the Coquimbo region of northern Chile. El Peñón, on Cerro Pachón Mountain, is juxtaposed with the existing Gemini South and Southern Astrophysical Research Telescopes.
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