SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory announced 3.2 gigapixel images for the first time. Sensors or focal planes – those that took images, would eventually move to the world’s largest digital camera; Which will be put on the Simony survey telescope itself Vera c. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
“This is a huge milestone for us”, said LSTS camera project manager Vincent Raitt in a SLAC press release. The LSST, or Space and Time Legacy Survey, will be a survey that provides the widest, deepest views of the night sky. “The focal plane will produce images for the LSST, so it is the capable and sensitive eye of the Rubin Observatory.”
As the SLAC lecturer notes above, the focal plane of the giant camera is made up of 189 individual sensors. These sensors are similar to digital consumer cameras, although far more advanced. They do mainly similar work, however: by capturing light and converting it into electrical signals that produce digital images.
At the top is a Romanesco broccoli image of the focal plane. For those unfamiliar, Romansko are edible flower buds, which belong to the same species of bud, cauliflower, etc. They choose Romanesque because of its complex surface structure. The team also took images of other objects, including a Flemrian engraving. If you go to the bottom of this page, you can zoom in to each photo.
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Now that the team at the observatory has confirmed that the focal plane is working, it will be placed inside the cryostat – this aircraft has to be kept at -150 ° F to function. The cryostat will, in turn, be inserted into the main camera body.
Once the observatory is fully operational, it will use this 3.2 billion-pixel camera the size of 40 million moons to image an area of the sky. The sensor array will be so sensitive that it will be able to spot the dimmer 100 million times compared to the naked eye. (This would be equivalent to looking at a candle from thousands of miles away.) Over a ten-year period, the camera will collect images of about 20 billion galaxies.
Aurelian Guichard
What do you think about these 3,200 megapixel images? Are you desperate to see some high-resolution deep-space photos like we are? Go deeper into the comments, people!
Feature image: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory