Science News Of The First Photograph Taken By The Largest Camera In History
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
The largest-ever single shot photo taken by the LSST camera was of a piece of broccoli.
Another of the most fascinating science articles that came out in 2020 was about the successful creation of the largest digital camera in history. This 13-foot camera is part of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory Telescope in Chile and is called the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera.
With an impressive 3,200-megapixels, photographs that have been taken by the camera are the largest single-shot photographs ever produced in history. Yet, one of the first objects photographed using the mega-camera was a single piece of Romanesco broccoli.
“With the tight specifications, we really pushed the limits of what’s possible to take advantage of every square millimeter of the focal plane and maximize the science we can do with it,” said scientist Aaron Roodman. But why use this high-tech space gadget to capture a vegetable?
The answer lies in the microscopic structure of Romanesco broccoli, which hold self-repeating structures known as fractal patterns. These highly-detailed patterns are commonly found in nature and make the perfect test object for the camera sensor’s high-definition capabilities.
Interestingly, the LSST camera doesn’t work that much differently than the camera on a smartphone. As with your smartphone camera, the LSST camera’s focal plane converts light into a series of electrical signals that generate a digital photo.
The major difference between the two is that the LSST camera has a much more complex imaging core. The photographs produced by the LSST camera lens are so detailed that a full-size version of a single shot requires a 78-inch 4K ultra-high-definition TV screen to be able to view it completely.
The telescope itself is still under construction at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California. But the successful test shots suggest that the telescope is poised to produce fantastic images from deep in outer space.
