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The largest camera ever built for astrophysics (3200-megapixels, >3000 kg) was installed this week at the Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachón in Chile.
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) camera, the final major component of the Rubin Observatory's Simonyi Survey Telescope, was transported to the summit in May 2024.
After a few more months of testing, first light is expected around 4 Jul 2025.
https://noirlab.edu/public/news/noirlab2511/
https://www.lsst.org/about/project-status
#Science #Astronomy #Space
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Here is a fascinating time-lapse video of the LSST Camera being installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
"The team on the summit used Rubin’s vertical platform lift to move the LSST Camera up to the telescope floor onto a transport cart. Following a carefully planned procedure, the team then used a custom lifting device to carefully position and secure the LSST Camera on the telescope."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmRwhZ3k8-g
Credit: RubinObs/NOIRLab/SLAC/NSF/DOE/AURA
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@AkaSci@fosstodon.orgThe objectives of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory include -
• Probing dark energy and dark matter
• Taking an inventory of the solar system
• Exploring the transient optical sky
• Mapping the Milky Way
The LSST will image the entire visible sky every 3-4 nights, allowing it to detect objects that change in brightness or position and to discover billions of new stars and galaxies.
By comparison, SPHEREx will take 6 months for a survey of the full sky, with spectra.
The Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time LSST Camera is the largest camera ever constructed for astronomy. It is a large-aperture, wide-field optical camera, capable of viewing light from the near UV to near infrared wavelengths.
Length: 4.5 m
Height: 1.65 m
Weight: 2,800 kg
Pixels: 3.2 billion
Wavelength: 0.32–1.06 μm
Filters: 6 (u-g-r-i-z-y)
Field of view = 3.5° (moon = 0.5°)
Operating temperature: -100°C
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
https://www.lsst.org/about/camera/features
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The focal plane of the Vera C. Rubin telescope consists of 189 4kx4k charge-coupled device (CCD) sensors, arranged in a total of 21 3-by-3 square arrays. The system is cooled to about -100 °C to minimize noise.
The 3.5° field of view of the 64 cm wide array is 40 times the area of the full moon in the sky.
Camera Data Rates: ~3.2 GBytes/sec peak raw data 
1 pixel = 16 bits (raw)
Pixels: 3.2 billion
Detector read-out time: 2 sec
https://www.flickr.com/photos/slaclab/with/50212773953
https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/lsst
#Rubin
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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory Simonyi Survey Telescope consists of 3 aspheric mirrors: an 8.4-m primary mirror M1, a 3.5-m convex secondary mirror M2, and a 5.0-m tertiary mirror M3.
The primary and tertiary mirrors are fabricated from a single piece of glass.The secondary mirror (M2) is the largest convex mirror ever made.
Note the location of the 3 ton LSST camera perched below the high secondary mirror.
https://www.lsst.org/about/tel-site/optical_design
#Rubin #astronomy
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Here is a fascinating video of the journey of the 3-ton LSST Camera from SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California to Rubin Observatory on the summit of Cerro Pachón in Chile. The camera arrived on the summit on May 16, 2024.
The video also shows the rugged and beautiful site of the observatory and pays homage to the engineers and technicians involved in the move.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cbhl1bysCAY
Credit: RubinObs/NSF/AURA/S. Deppe/O. Bonin, T. Lange, M. Lopez, J. Orrell (SLAC National Lab)
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@AkaSci A veritable firehose of data. The project as a whole has, quite reasonably, been described as a high performance computing project with a telescope on the side. The telescope and camera are undeniably impressive, but the data side of things is at least as ambitious.
Sifting through that flood of images and automatically identifying, categorising and cataloguing vast numbers of astronomical objects/events, flagging particularly interesting ones for further investigation, doing so as fast as the data is coming in, and with sufficient accuracy that the astronomers aren't swamped with false positives/misidentifications, is a huge challenge.
@AkaSci I was once at a gathering where one of the builders of this camera was present (but I did not know it at the time.)
I was talking-up my new 4K video camera and he said "you should see my camera". I lost all my bragging rights.