Photo credit: RubinObs / NOIRLab / SLAC / NSF / DOE / AURA / A. Pizarro D.
It’s official, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which is currently the world’s largest digital camera, has been installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. Weighing nearly 6,200 pounds and measuring 5.5 ft (h) x 9.8 ft (w), the camera is literally the size of a small SUV, with a 3.2-gigapixel (3,200-megapixel) focal plane, making it the highest-resolution camera of its kind.
Technically speaking, the camera’s focal plane consists of 189 charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors, arranged in 21 “rafts” of nine sensors each, covering a flat image surface with a diameter of about 25.2 inches (64 centimeters). Each one of its pixels is approximately 10 microns wide, providing a sampling resolution of 0.2 arcseconds, allowing for highly detailed imaging. It’s capable of capturing a 3.5-degree field of view, or the equivalent to an area of the sky about the size of 40 full moons.
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This is the last major step in the construction of one of the most ambitious scientific facilities ever created. It’s a testament to the technical prowess and dedication of the entire NSF–DOE Rubin Observatory team — and the scientific community that has been striving to get to this point for over two decades,” said Sethuraman Panchanathan, NSF Director.
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