Scientists Complete Construction of the Biggest Digital Camera Ever (gizmodo.com) 29
Isaac Schultz reports via Gizmodo: Nine years and 3.2 billion pixels later, it is complete: the LSST Camera stands as the largest digital camera ever built for astronomy and will serve as the centerpiece of the Vera Rubin Observatory, poised to begin its exploration of the southern skies. The Rubin Observatory's key goal is the 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a sweeping, near-constant observation of space. This endeavor will yield 60 petabytes of data on the composition of the universe, the nature and distribution of dark matter, dark energy and the expansion of the universe, the formation of our galaxy, our intimate little solar system, and more. The camera will use its 5.1-foot-wide optical lens to take a 15-second exposure of the sky every 20 seconds, automatically changing filters to view light in every wavelength from near-ultraviolet to the near-infrared. Its constant monitoring of the skies will eventually amount to a timelapse of the heavens; it will highlight fleeting events for other scientists to train their telescopes on, and monitor changes in the southern sky.
To do this, the team needed a Rolls Royce of a digital camera. Mind you, the camera actually cost many million times that of an actual Royce Royce, and at 6,200 pounds (2,812 kilograms), it weighs a lot more than a fancy car. Each of the 21 rafts that makes up the camera's focal plane is the price of a Maserati, and are worth every penny if they collect the sort of data scientists expect them to. "I'm personally most excited to study the expansion of the Universe using gravitational lenses to better understand Dark Energy," said Aaron Roodman, a physicist at SLAC and lead on the camera program, in an email to Gizmodo. "That means two things: 1) measuring the brightness in all six of our filters of literally billions of galaxies and very carefully measuring their shape, which has been subtly altered by the bending of light by matter, and 2) discovering and studying very special objects where a distant quasar is almost perfectly lined up with a more nearby galaxy."
Speaking through a SLAC release, Rodman said the camera's images could "resolve a golf ball from around 15 miles away, while covering a swath of the sky seven times wider than the full moon." The first images from the Rubin Observatory are slated to be publicly released in March 2025, which feels like a long way away. But several important agenda items still need to happen. For one, the SLAC team has to ship the LSST camera safely to Chile from its current lodgings in northern California. (Don't worry -- they've made a test run of the journey.) Then, the observatory's mirrors need to be readied for testing and the observatory's dome has to be completed, among some other tasks. But whenever all that is complete, the legacy survey will launch into a decade's worth of scientific discovery. Rubin Observatory estimates suggest that LSST could "increase the number of known objects by a factor of 10," according to a SLAC release.
To do this, the team needed a Rolls Royce of a digital camera. Mind you, the camera actually cost many million times that of an actual Royce Royce, and at 6,200 pounds (2,812 kilograms), it weighs a lot more than a fancy car. Each of the 21 rafts that makes up the camera's focal plane is the price of a Maserati, and are worth every penny if they collect the sort of data scientists expect them to. "I'm personally most excited to study the expansion of the Universe using gravitational lenses to better understand Dark Energy," said Aaron Roodman, a physicist at SLAC and lead on the camera program, in an email to Gizmodo. "That means two things: 1) measuring the brightness in all six of our filters of literally billions of galaxies and very carefully measuring their shape, which has been subtly altered by the bending of light by matter, and 2) discovering and studying very special objects where a distant quasar is almost perfectly lined up with a more nearby galaxy."
Speaking through a SLAC release, Rodman said the camera's images could "resolve a golf ball from around 15 miles away, while covering a swath of the sky seven times wider than the full moon." The first images from the Rubin Observatory are slated to be publicly released in March 2025, which feels like a long way away. But several important agenda items still need to happen. For one, the SLAC team has to ship the LSST camera safely to Chile from its current lodgings in northern California. (Don't worry -- they've made a test run of the journey.) Then, the observatory's mirrors need to be readied for testing and the observatory's dome has to be completed, among some other tasks. But whenever all that is complete, the legacy survey will launch into a decade's worth of scientific discovery. Rubin Observatory estimates suggest that LSST could "increase the number of known objects by a factor of 10," according to a SLAC release.
Camera? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
And we can use DALL.E to fill in the details
Author sucks at math.. (Score:5, Informative)
Mind you, the camera actually cost many million times that of an actual Royce Royce,
Really? A Rolls-Royce Phantom is $493,000. (I rounded up to $500K for simpler math) Many millions of times? I'll do you a solid and assume you meant TWO millions. Two million times 500,000 = $1,000,000,000,000. That's a trillion. Nobody spent a trillion dollars on a fucking camera.
What's the point of reporting on something if you're just going to make shit up?
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Weights, also. Rolls Royces are around the 2,500 Kg mark, even before the armour plating and whatnots go in.
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Weights, also. Rolls Royces are around the 2,500 Kg mark, even before the armour plating and whatnots go in.
Yeah. It's only 200kg more. i.e. add 3 passengers and you're already there Rolls-Royce Cullinan Length 5,341 mm (210.3 in) Width 2,000 mm (78.7 in) (with mirrors: 2,164 mm (85.2 in)) Height 1,835 mm (72.2 in) Kerb weight 2,660 kg (5,864.3 lb)
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Ask Dan Rather.
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Thank you for doing the work. I had exactly the same thought.
Pfft... science reporters, mirite??? Probably majored in basket weaving, got a job as a reporter, and got randomly assigned to the science column.
Re: Author sucks at math.. (Score:2)
One I've seen talks in "x times faster than a rifle bullet" and other units only encountered in Murica. "Dumb it down to target audience", the producer, I assume, said.
Other than that the series offers some great insights, like on interferometry.
Back on the LSST: the age of big data astronomy will really have arrived with that scope. Like with the LHC, the problem will no longer be to get the data, but to be able to sift through that data to find and correlate.
Re: Author sucks at math.. (Score:2)
Argh. URL syntax wrong again.
So, "one astronomy course I've seen" https://www.thegreatcourses.co... [thegreatcourses.com]
Someone got a link or TL;DR on /. posting syntax? Kinda new here :p
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Someone got a link or TL;DR on /. posting syntax? Kinda new here :p
You can copy and past links without any formatting and they'll be clickable. The text below the submit button lists the various allowed HTML options. As always, preview before posting.
Re: Author sucks at math.. (Score:2)
Thanks!!
Posting from mobile usually, no previews there. No rating either );
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One I've seen talks in "x times faster than a rifle bullet" and other units only encountered in Murica. "Dumb it down to target audience", the producer, I assume, said.
Fair enough, but as another commenter quipped: "1000x the cost of a Rolls-Royce". That would get the point across and not be so inaccurate as to be laughable.
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> not-to-exceed total project cost is $473.0 million for NSF’s contribution to the project’s scope.
https://nsf-gov-resources.nsf.... [nsf.gov]
So, not "many million times that of an actual Royce Royce", it's only about 1000 times more.
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A Rolls-Royce Phantom is $493,000. (I rounded up to $500K for simpler math) Many millions of times? I'll do you a solid and assume you meant TWO millions. Two million times 500,000 = $1,000,000,000,000. That's a trillion. Nobody spent a trillion dollars on a fucking camera.
For completeness, the LSST will cost a little under $500M. So, as much as 1000 Rolls Royces.
Give the reporter a break, he's a science reporter. Getting within four (okay, maybe five, depending on the meaning of "many") orders of magnitude is pretty good for one of them. I agree that six orders of magnitude would have been reason for scorn.
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*slaps top of camera* (Score:3)
"You can fit so much porn in this baby!"
Things This Is Good For (Score:2)
#10. Really big cats!
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Golf ball? (Score:1)
Speed and resolution (Score:2)
The slideshow was really cool. It says the camera moves *really* fast but what does that mean, does it spin around the entire horizon at a visible rate? Also this talk about golf balls and how many full moons it covers is difficult to follow. I know it is not designed to look at the moon or planets but if it did, how small an object could it see on say the Moon, Mars or an Asteroid? Could it easily image an astronaut in orbit, and would he have to remain still for 15 seconds? Can it be used to find dangerou
"and at 2812 kilograms"... (Score:2)
.. and at 2,950 kilograms, someone doesn't know how much a 2023 Rolls-Royce Spectre weighs.
Alternate articles... (Score:2)
Here's some links from the Rubin Observatory website for those wishing to read something less juvenile than the Gizmodo article.
https://rubinobservatory.org/e... [rubinobservatory.org]
https://www.lsst.org/about/cam... [lsst.org]
The best camera is the one that fits in your pocke (Score:2)
One day this LSST will be outperformed by a smartphone with AI. /s