The world’s largest digital camera is bigger than an SUV, has more pixels than 300 iPhones and will help researchers map the entire visible Universe. The 3.2 Gigapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera was recently mounted on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

The camera was built at DOE’s (Department of Energy) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California. After two decades of work, its completion was announced in April. This sensitive camera will soon be permanently installed at Rubin Observatory, producing detailed images with an exceptional field of view encompassing an area equivalent to 40 full moons.

The main camera weighs in at 3,000 kilograms (6,600 pounds), and its front lens is over 1.5 meters (5 feet) across — the largest lens ever made for this purpose. It’s sensitive to light from ultraviolet to infrared, so the Rubin Observatory camera uses one of six different colored filters to chose the range. It can be changed in under 2 minutes.

The Rubin Observatory will collect 15 terabytes of data every day to power advances and discoveries in many areas of science, including the nature of dark matter and dark energy, mapping the Milky Way and surveying the solar system. The telescope system is designed to refocus on a new target every few seconds, and will cover the entire sky at high resolution every 3 days!

This video chronicles the journey of the camera to the giant Vera Rubin Observatory in the Atacama desert and atop a mountain.

This will be the largest telescope that can pivot quickly, perfect for responding in real time to observations made by less powerful or specialty telescopes. Then back to surveying. For example, the LIGO Gravity Observatory can detect actual gravity waves from cosmic-size collisions, like neutron star mergers. As soon as the gravity wave is observed, a global network of telescopes will simultaneously train their sights on the object to gather as much information as possible before it fades.

The project actually began with private donations from software billionaires Charles Simony and Bill Gates in 2007. Then the National Science Foundation liked the progress and began lobbying for full funding. It became the top priority in 2010, because of it’s ability to map the entire sky for dark matter and dark energy locations, multiple times. These are the biggest mysteries in astronomy today.

“The arrival of the cutting-edge LSST Camera in Chile brings us a huge step closer to science that will address today’s most pivotal questions in astrophysics,” said Kathy Turner, DOE’s program manager for the Rubin Observatory. The observatory will probe the nature of dark matter and dark energy using several billion galaxies, many newly discovered, by employing a variety of methods to cross-check results.

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is the most detailed deep sky map to date, and will be a starting point for Rubin. Though it’s likely that Rubin’s greatest discoveries will be in the billions of new galaxies, stars, and unknown and unimagined objects it will see. It will take years for teams of astronomers using special AI programs to exam the gigantic data set (over an exabyte of data, the equivalent of 10 to the 18th power!) The project will also survey our solar system for transient objects, like spotting meteors for planetary defense.

The telescope is scheduled for “First Light”, or its first image, in April 2025.

Vera Florence Cooper Rubin (July 23, 1928 – December 25, 2016) was an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation rates and is credited with discovering the first proof of Dark Matter. Rubin was actively advocating for women in science, and she was known for her mentorship of aspiring female astronomers. Her legacy was described by The New York Times as “ushering in a Copernican-scale change” in cosmological theory. Shortly after her passing a bill to rename the new telescope was passed in Congress.

This time-lapse shows the 9 year construction of the new observatory on top of a 9,000 foot mountain, Cerro Pachón.

-30-