In a lab in the US state of California, researchers are working on what they believe is the largest digital camera in the world. This is about the size of a small car and weighs three tons, said the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Palo Alto.
The largest lens (pictured below) is nearly 1.6 meters in diameter. In total, the camera has 189 sensors and 3.2 gigapixels (3200 megapixels). According to the scientists, this could, for example, pick up a golf ball at a distance of 24 kilometers.
The product, which will cost about $168 million, will be installed at an observatory in the Chilean Andes in 2024, after it was previously demonstrated to journalists in California. To display just one full-size photo that the camera will capture of the southern sky would require more than 1,500 high-definition television screens, experts said.
Intended to map the southern starry sky
As part of the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) project, the camera will map the Southern Hemisphere skies for a decade, creating “a wealth of data that scientists will use to identify some of the unravel the universe’s greatest mysteries “to better understand — including dark matter and dark energy,” according to the National Accelerator Laboratory.
Source: Krone
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