You have to see the largest digital camera on Earth. It’s the size of a car

The largest digital camera on Earth has been completed, and it will soon revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

The Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California announced the completion of the LSST camera, short for “Legacy Survey of Space and Time.” The giant-lensed instrument is about the size of a car, and in 2025 it will begin taking images of deep space at the long-awaited Vera C. Rubin Observatory located in Chile’s towering mountains, the laboratory said. You can see the unprecedented camera images below.

“With the completion of the unique LSST camera at SLAC and its imminent integration with the rest of the Rubin Observatory systems in Chile, we will soon begin producing the greatest movie ever and the most informative map of the night sky ever compiled,” said Željko Ivezic, Rubin Observatory construction manager and astronomer at University of Washington, in A statement.

The camera and telescope mounted on it will provide powerful power. Engineers will attach the large camera — which weighs three metric tons (about 3.3 U.S. tons) — to the 27.5-foot-wide (8.4-meter) Simonyon survey telescope, itself a revolutionary instrument: The fastest A large telescope on Earth, with the ability to rotate 180 degrees in just 20 seconds.

The goal is to create an unprecedented catalog of the universe. The laboratory explained that this will be “the first time that the telescope has cataloged more galaxies than there are humans on Earth.” Every 20 seconds, the giant digital camera takes a 15-second exposure. The camera is so large that each image covers an area of ​​the sky 40 times larger than the full moon.

With a front lens more than five feet wide, the camera has extremely high resolution. “Its images are so detailed that it can see a golf ball from about 15 miles away, while covering an area of ​​sky seven times larger than a full moon,” Aaron Rodman, deputy director of the Rubin Observatory, said in a statement. “These images, which contain billions of stars and galaxies, will help reveal the secrets of the universe.”

View from the LSST camera.
Credit: Jacqueline Ramseyer Orrell/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Drawing showing the size of the LSST camera.
Credit: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

It truly is a 21st century camera on a 21st century telescope.

“His images are so detailed that he can see a golf ball from about 15 miles away.”

“I think we’re building the crawler and googling the sky,” Mario Jurek, a University of Washington professor who works at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, told Mashable in 2023. “Now, instead of going out there to a large telescope (which can sometimes take months to propose, approve, and implement), a scientist will be able to go to a website, make a query, and access the data in seconds. Access the best data sets possible.” “

How the telescope will change our understanding of space

Over the past two centuries, astronomers and space agencies like NASA have discovered about 1.2 million asteroids in our solar system. After three to six months of monitoring, Robin will double that number. Jurek said that within 10 years, 5 million asteroids will be discovered.

– The number of icy worlds outside the distant planet Neptune (“trans-Neptunian objects” and dwarf planets) will increase by about tenfold.

There are two types of interstellar comets known today. Robin will specify between 10 and 50 times more.

“And – in the case of Planet Planet X is a speculative world in our solar system, and may exist beyond the orbit of Pluto.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory isn’t the only massive future telescope that will soon begin scanning the night sky. the Giant Magellan Telescope, which investigates the evolution of the universe and the nature of planets outside our solar system (exoplanets), comes online in the late 2020s. the Very large telescopeThe telescope, with a mirror 128 feet wide, will become the largest optical telescope on Earth later this decade.