What will be the largest digital camera in the world, with a resolution of 3.2 gigapixels, is almost ready to be installed on top of Cerro Pachón, a mountain in northern Chile, at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. There it will allow, in conjunction with the associated telescope, to scan the sky with the mission of helping scientists gain knowledge about the Milky Way, dark matter and other astronomical phenomena.
This huge camera is part of the LSST project (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), which should be the largest synoptic survey telescope in the world and for a long time we have been talking about its enormous optics whose main lens measures a meter and a half (approx) in diameter and is complemented by two other smaller lenses and a set of filters designed to cover six wavelength bands.
The optics were designed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp and they are currently being assembled at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, on a structure that was designed and manufactured in Spain.
As for the sensor of this gigantic camera, the focal plane array comprises 189 16 MP 4Kx4K CCD Sensors with pixels of 10 µm. The sensors are grouped in 3 x 3 arrays called rafts (“rafts”) that are identical and can be used on their own as a 144 megapixel camera. The camera assembly has 21 of these “rafts” to provide a total of approximately 3.2 gigapixels.
The camera has approximate measurements of 1.65 by three meters and a weight of almost 2,800 kg, and includes a filter change mechanism and shutter. It is placed in the middle of the telescope with a system to avoid optical vignetting and mounted on a silicon carbide grid inside a vacuum cryostat, with a complex thermal system that maintains CCDs at -100 ° C operating temperatureas it is important to control heat dissipation to limit thermal gradients that warp the lens in incoming light.
According to its creators, once operational (they hope that in January 2023), the camera will scan the sky throughout the night and will be able to carry out a uniform and deep study of space, performing some 200 thousand photographs per night and more than 5.2 million exposures in ten years. This will produce extremely high quality data with minimal downtime and maintenance.
Of course, the data collected will reach a whopping 15 terabytes of data every night (on average), which will result in an uncompressed data set of 200 petabytes total in ten years. Despite this, the system is ready to process image data in near real time and the information will be shared with scientists from all over the world.
More information | Vera C. Rubin Observatory
Via | Petapixel