Have you ever wondered what the largest camera in the world is? The safest thing is that if the idea has crossed your mind, you have discarded it because you saw them as absurd. However, such a camera exists and it is nothing more than the creation of a large digital camera, so much so that it will be useful for exploring outer space. However, it uses the same technology as the cameras we use every day. Let’s see, therefore, what its secrets are.
The largest chamber in the world has not yet been completed. It is located somewhere in the San Francisco Bay and is the work of seven years of accumulated work. Your destiny? The telescope called LSST or Legacy Survey of Space and Time that will be located at the Vera C. Rubin observatory in Cerro Pachón in Chile. The goal is to end up photographing the entire sky in record time, taking advantage of its enormous field of vision. However, its main camera has the particularity of not differing from digital cameras in appearance, moreover, it gives the feeling that one of them has been enlarged and placed in the center of the telescope.
This is the world’s largest camera
A camera of this size must also have a lens of considerable size , and, of course, exclusive. In this case, it measures about 5 feet in diameter , which is 1.57 meters and is so large that it currently holds the Guinness World Record . This is accompanied by three mirrors that have also been designed for the world’s largest camera. And speaking of dimensions, this will take photos of sections of the sky up to seven times the size of the moon in the sky. That is, a plot that corresponds to 3.5 degrees of the celestial vault . The idea is none other than to be able to take a photo every 15 seconds and that in the shortest possible time have the day to day of the sky.
Although what is most striking is the use of CCD sensors, each of them the same as those used by digital cameras. Of course, at a huge size, since it can convert photos into images whose resolution is 3.2 Gigapixels each . To put you in perspective, the most advanced iPhone camera to date is 48 Megapixels, or put another way, 0.048 Gigapixels in total. That is, the largest camera in the world can take photos with a resolution 67 times more powerful than the most expensive phone of the moment.
A supercomputer inside
However, a camera of this size has a series of problems, not only in terms of size, since it will need an airplane the wingspan of a Boeing 747, to transport it, but also because of a series of associated problems that appear with a device optical of such magnitude. If you think about it, having to process such an amount of information requires an extremely powerful computer system, so much so that it consumes 1100 W. How to refrigerate it? Sink it in ice, as the entire image processing system is in a tube at the back of the camera that must be continuously cooled to -100°C . This also helps to reduce the noise generated in the images.
Regarding the specifications of its hardware, it is not based on any known hardware , but has been created especially for the largest camera in the world, capable of handling up to 3000 channels of data and generating up to 11 billion bits per hour . So its processing capacity must be, yes or yes, that of a supercomputer. Be that as it may, the photos of the firmament will no longer be as before.