Vera Rubin’s Monster 3200-Megapixel Camera Takes its First Picture (in the Lab)

So much data will be produced, in fact, that there will be two dedicated 40 GB high speed fiber-optic data lines to handle it. All of that data will travel to the Archive Center in the US. There, it’ll be processed and stored, and made available to the community.

The Rubin Observatory will generate an extraordinary amount of data, and managing it requires high speed fiber optics and a data facility. Image Credit: Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA
UsageTerms Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International License
The Rubin Observatory will generate an extraordinary amount of data, and managing it requires high speed fiber optics and a data facility. Image Credit: Rubin Obs/NSF/AURA
UsageTerms Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 4.0 International License

All of this image gathering and processing will create the Rubin Observatory’s output: panoramic wide field images of the southern sky, one every few nights for 10 years. All those images will add up to one big, ten year long video of the night sky.

That will be the Rubin Observatory’s primary contribution to astronomy: the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The LSST will be a catalog of some 20 billion galaxies, more galaxies than there are humans. It will find all kinds of transient objects, like asteroids zipping around our Solar System, as well as distant supernovae. It’ll help map out dark matter and dark energy, and also our own Milky Way.

The camera sensor system is made up of units called rafts. Each raft contains several sensors each, and there are two types of rafts. 21 rafts contain nine sensors each, and those 21 are responsible for acquiring the images. Then there are four specialty rafts. They contain three sensors each, and are responsible for focusing the camera, and synchronizing with the rotation of the Earth.

The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) camera team has installed the first of 21 science rafts -- 3-by-3 arrays of state-of-the-art imaging sensors. This image shows one of the 3-by-3 image capturing arrays, and one of the smaller aiming and synchronizing arrays. Together the imaging system will take unprecedented 3,200-megapixel images of the night sky, which, over time, will produce the world's largest astrophysical movie. Photo: Farrin Abbott / SLAC
The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) camera team has installed the first of 21 science rafts — 3-by-3 arrays of state-of-the-art imaging sensors. This image shows one of the 3-by-3 image capturing arrays, and one of the smaller aiming and synchronizing arrays. Together the imaging system will take unprecedented 3,200-megapixel images of the night sky, which, over time, will produce the world’s largest astrophysical movie. Photo: Farrin Abbott / SLAC

“These specifications are just astounding,” said Steven Ritz, project scientist for the LSST Camera at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “These unique features will enable the Rubin Observatory’s ambitious science program.”

1 2 3 4 5 6

Share