An expertpanel of the U.s. department of energy has given its approval to the development of a camera with a resolution of 3.2 billion pixels. The camera will be used in a new telescope in Chile.
The nineteen specialists storey expertpanel of the ministry in the project, led by the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, proposed for the so-called Critical Decision-1 status, as it is to read in a R&D Mag. Although the higher management of the ministry, finally, the state decides, it is likely that the recommendation of the expertpaneel is acquired.
With the acquisition of the status of the project is virtually assured of funding. The next milestone for the project is the CD-2 status, which the basic design must be approved, while the CD-3 status means that it is commenced with the construction. The latest status, CD-4, is the completion of the camera.
The camera is built by the SLAC and is part of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope on the Cerro Pachón peak in the north of Chile. This telescope will have a main mirror with a diameter of 8.4 m and goes under the Milky way mapping. The Lsst weighs a total of 650 tonnes, of which 60 tons is composed of optical components. The new telescope is required because the modification of existing telescopes and space telescopes are economically or technically not feasible.
The heart of the telescope is formed by the new camera. This gets 189 high-sensitivity ccd image sensors, which together with a resolution of 3.2 gigapixels yield. These image data are within two seconds to read. Each sensor is divided in 16 datasectoren each with their own uitleeskanaal. Every night produces a data stream of 15TB. During his ten-year service life, the camera will have a database fill with a total of 100 petabytes of image information.
