The LSST Camera is roughly the size of a small car and weighs three tons. It features a five-foot wide front lens and a 3,200-megapixel sensor that will be cooled to -100 degrees Celsius to reduce noise.

The camera will eventually live atop the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Simonyi Survey Telescope in Chile where it will be tasked with observing the night sky for a decade.

Light will be reflected through a set of mirrors, the largest of which is 27 feet wide. When operational, the 3.2 gigapixel detector will capture 15 terabytes of data per night over its 10-year survey as it investigates 37 billion stars and galaxies.

The large aperture, wide-field optical camera is capable of viewing light from the near ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths and is made up of 189 charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors arranged in a total of 21, three-by-three square arrays mounted on platforms called rafts.

Not only is the sensor the world’s largest, but the lens fits that description too at 1.57-meters (five feet) across, it’s already been recognized as the biggest optic in the world by the Guinness Book of World Records.

For some reason, it reminds me of the famous Wonkavision camera.

Links:

• https://petapixel.com/2022/10/04/3200-megapixels-the-worlds-largest-camera-is-almost-complete/