They finish manufacturing the world's largest digital camera for astronomy

When installed on a telescope in Chile, the more than three thousand megapixel camera will help astronomers investigate dark matter, dark energy and other mysteries of the universe.

After two decades of work, a team led by scientists and engineers from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, dependent on the Department of Energy of the United States Government, has completed the construction of the LSST (Legacy Survey of Space and Time) camera.

As the heart of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, the 3,200-megapixel camera will help astronomers observe our universe in unprecedented detail. It will generate a huge wealth of data about the southern night sky that researchers will exploit in search of new knowledge about the universe. These data will help us understand what dark energy is, which drives the accelerated expansion of the universe, and determine the identity of dark matter, the mysterious form of matter that constitutes around 85% of the mass of the universe, in addition to serving to other astronomical research.

The unique camera is approximately the size of a car and weighs around three tons. Its front lens measures more than one and a half meters in diameter, being the largest ever made for this purpose. The camera's huge focal plane is housed in a vacuum-sealed cavity. That focal plane is made up of 201 individual custom-designed CCD sensors, and is so flat that it does not vary by more than a tenth of the thickness of a human hair. The pixels only measure 10 microns from side to side.

The camera's resolution is so high that it would take hundreds of ultra-high-definition televisions to display a single full-size image, says Aaron Roodman of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. His images are so detailed that they would allow you to recognize a golf ball photographed from 24 kilometers away.

Technical staff examining the camera. (Photo: Greg Stewart / SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

The camera, already finished, seen from the front. (Photo: Jacqueline Ramseyer Orrell / SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Now that the LSST Chamber is finished and has been thoroughly tested at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, it will be packed and shipped to Chile, to finally be transported to Cerro Pachón, in the Andes, at 2,700 meters of altitude, where it will be installed at the Simonyi Survey Telescope before the end of this year. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)