Дослідники перевыряють камеру LSST. Незабаром камеру буде відправлено до Чилі, де вона стане серцем обсерваторії Віри К. Рубін (праворуч).
Specialists of the National Accelerator Laboratory SLAC noted a historic event lasting more than two decades — the completion of the construction and testing of the 3.2 gigapixel (!) digital camera LSST. This is the largest camera ever created, and it will operate on the future Simonyi Survey Telescope at Rubin Observatory (named after the American astronomer who scientifically confirmed the existence of dark matter).
The construction of the LSST camera began in April 2015 — step by step, the team of engineers carried out a phased assembly: by September 2018, the cryostat, lenses, 12 of the 21 necessary CCD-sensors, and in the fall of 2020, the fully assembled focal plane was already tested. In October 2021, the last of the six filters was shipped, after which the fully assembled camera was cooled to operating temperatures for final testing. And on April 3, 2024, the laboratory staff solemnly announced the completion of the construction and comprehensive testing of the camera.
The LSST camera is the size of a small passenger car and weighs about three tons. Its front lens has a diameter of more than one and a half meters, and the diameter of the auxiliary lens is 90 centimeters. The matrix (64 centimeters across) contains 201 individual CCD detectors. The camera also has six filters covering wavelengths from 330 to 1080 nanometers. Everything is carefully squeezed into a cryostat that will maintain a temperature of approximately -100 degrees Celsius to reduce noise.
In terms of capabilities, in practice, the staggering 3.2-gigapixel resolution means that the LSST camera is capable of capturing images with enough detail to distinguish a golf ball from a distance of approximately 25 kilometers.
«Images of billions of stars and galaxies will help reveal the secrets of the Universe».
Aaron Rudman, SLAC professor, deputy director of the Vera Rubin Observatory and LSST Camera program manager
The next stage — in the near future, the camera will be packed in a specialized shipping container for transportation and sent to Chile, to the Simoni Observatory of the Vera Rubin Observatory. The LSST telescope itself is currently under construction on the top of El Peñón on Cerro Pachon Mountain.
This is a new generation ground-based telescope, or rather a three-mirror anastigmat with an 8.4-meter main mirror and a wide field of view (3.5° diameter). In fact, the LSST’s field of view is forty times larger than the full disk of the Moon. Every few nights, it will take pictures of the entire available sky so as not to miss the moment when the Universe winks at us.
The main scientific mission of LSST, as the name of the instrument suggests, is a ten-year survey of the sky. Among the specific goals are observing 20 billion distant galaxies, studying dark energy and dark matter, cataloging the Milky Way and small bodies of the Solar System, including near-Earth asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects, and detecting fast-moving optical events such as novae and supernovae, gamma-ray bursts.
The LSST will also mark the beginning of a new era where software will play as much (if not more) of a role in astronomy as the telescope itself — the amount of data being observed is growing steadily and scientists will not be physically able to directly view even a characteristic fraction of the data that the LSST will collect and send. Instead, they will rely more and more on AI algorithms to explore relationships within the data set.
LSST will become one of the main ground-based telescopes for the next decade and will significantly enhance the current fleet of optical telescopes. The project originated in 2001, and construction of the mirror began (with private funds) in 2007. The projected total cost is about $680 million. Its construction is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and private donors through the international nonprofit LSST Corporation. Financial control is exercised by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA).
The LSST telescope is expected to see «first light» in January 2025, and full operation will begin in August 2025. All data collected by LSST should be made publicly available two years after its launch.
In the future, LSST will be joined by the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (old name — WFIRST) — it is planned to be launched by May 2027 on a Falcon Heavy. By combining the data from WFIRST and LSST, astronomers will be able to view the Universe in nine different wavelengths, providing the most detailed wide-angle view of the Universe.
Given the recent controversial KIIS survey about 43% of Ukrainians believing in astrology, I wonder what proportion are interested in astronomy (idea for a new survey, KIIS, no thanks)? A new wave of discussions about the potential existence of extraterrestrial civilizations, the Great Filter hypothesis and the Fermi paradox in 3, 2, 1…