I wonder how long it will be until we can have a camera like this in our smartphones
Funding approved for 3200-megapixel Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Press Release
Rendering of the LSST observatory (foreground) atop Cerro Pachón in Chile.
When LSST starts taking images of the entire visible southern sky in 2022, it will produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed. Over a 10-year time frame, LSST will image several tens of billions of objects and create movies of the sky with unprecedented detail. Image credit: Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project Office
Plans for the construction of the world’s largest digital camera at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have reached a major milestone. The 3200-megapixel centerpiece of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which will provide unprecedented details of the universe and help address some of its biggest mysteries, has received key “Critical Decision 2” approval from the DOE.
“This important decision endorses the camera fabrication budget that we proposed,” said LSST Director Steven Kahn. “Together with the construction funding we received from the National Science Foundation in August, it is now clear that LSST will have the support it needs to be completed on schedule.”
Science operations are scheduled to begin in 2022 with LSST taking digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile. It will produce the widest, deepest and fastest views of the night sky ever observed. Over a 10-year time frame, the observatory will detect tens of billions of objects — the first time a telescope will catalogue more objects in the universe than there are people on Earth — and will create movies of the sky with details that have never been seen before.
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