The world’s largest digital camera ever made has now been installed and could start photographing the galaxy as early as next month. The Legacy of Space and Time (LSST) is a car-sized, 3,200MP camera designed to detect faint celestial objects as it captures a decade-long timelapse.
The camera has now finished the installation process at the Vera C Rubin Observatory in Chile and is ready to begin final testing before capturing its first celestial images.
The LSST camera completed construction in April of 2024, but moving the world’s largest digital camera (which weighs over 3,000 kilograms / 6,000 pounds) proved to be a long and complex process.
Bringing the camera from where it was manufactured, in California, to the observatory in Chile required a chartering 747 airplane to bring the camera along with ten truckloads of gear to the facility. The camera then underwent months of testing in a clean room at the observatory. In March 2025, the crew lifted the camera into place on the SImonyi Survey Telescope, bringing the camera’s nearly 20-year-long development to near conclusion.
With the camera installed, the next step is to finish testing and fine-tuning before the LSST takes its first images then embarks on the ten-year timelapse. Those early images could come as early as next month, according to LSST camera project leader Aaron Roodman. Researchers are hoping to use the camera to study dark matter and how galaxies form, along with gathering information about the Milky Way and the solar system.
Beyond being just the largest digital camera ever made, the LSST uses an 8.4-meter primary and tertiary mirror along with a 3.5-meter secondary mirror in the observatory's optical system. That optical design, along with the 3200MP resolution, is expected to enable the camera to capture faint objects.
The camera’s capabilities are said to be strong enough to see a golf ball from 15 miles away, with experts expecting the project to lead to discoveries from asteroids to supernova explosions.
The LSST is expected to capture hundreds of images of the night sky every night for ten years, with those images then being used to create a historic timelapse. Those 3 billion-pixel images are so detailed that viewing one in full resolution would take a wall of 400 UltraHD TVs.
The project is a joint effort between the US National Science Foundation and US Department of Energy Office of Science. The Rubin Observatory is operated by the NSF NOIRLab (managed by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy) and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (managed by Stanford University) and receives contributions from more than 40 organizations in 28 countries.
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