Funding of Record-Breaking 3.2 Gigapixel Camera for Telescope Approved by DOE

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently gave final approval of $168 million in funding for what would be the most powerful (and likely most expensive) camera to date, created for the new, primarily National Science Foundation-funded Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) that will live on the peak of Chile's Cerro Pachòn.

When it goes into action in 2022, the LSST will be responsible for surveying details of the universe never before seen, including capturing more galaxies than people on the planet for the first time. Its unique dual-surface primary/tertiary mirror, the first and largest 22-ton portion of which was completed in January after more than six years of grinding and polishing, will enable scientists to refocus the three-mirror-surface telescope as quickly as a two-mirror telescope while being able to capture a relatively large 3.5-degree swath of the night sky.

The LSST also features a unique filter-changing system will allow the camera to record anything from near-ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths of light. These filters combined with the wide aperture and 3200-megapixel sensor of the LSST should give scientists a tool 1,000 times more capable than today's best telescopes in order to help uncover the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.

If you think your new Canon 5DS R is costing you more than expected in additional hard drive storage costs, the DOE's Stanford-based SLAC National Accelerator Laboratories committed to supporting a database and specialized computer software system to store and catalog the 20TB of data that the LSST will capture every night, which will amount to six million gigabytes (or 60 petabytes) of data each year. In fact, SLAC is in charge of oversight for almost the entire project, including a 2,000-square-foot, 2-story-tall clean room it already built for the fabrication of the camera.

The camera itself will take five years to build, after which it will eventually be installed into the small-car-sized LSST at a site that has already begun construction on Chile's Cerro Pachòn mountain.

[via SLAC]