World's largest digital camera to help new Vera Rubin Observatory make a 'time-lapse record of the universe' (video)

[Admin]

A major milestone with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory has been reached with the installation of the telescope's enormous eye — the world's largest digital camera.

World's largest digital camera to help new Vera Rubin Observatory make a 'time-lapse record of the universe' (video) : Read more

 

[Unclear Engineer]

This article never says how many pixels the camera has, it just says that it would take "400 ultra-high-definition TV screens" to display them all simultaneously.

While I understand that the authors want to put the extremely large number of pixels into some sort of commonly understood context, that is still not a substitute for the actual number.

And, in this case "ultra-high definition" is ambiguous by at least a factor of 4 on the number of pixels. Try googling "ultra-high-definition TV screens" and you will see that most consider "4K" to be equivalent to "UHD", although there are now "8K" versions. See https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-ente...ything-you-need-to-know-about-tv-resolutions/ .

So, trying to translate, "UHD" might be anywhere from 8 million to 33 million pixels per screen, making the Rubin camera somewhere between 3.2 billion and 13.2 billion pixels.

So, come-on "journalists", start with the facts, then provide the context you think is important.

And for actual astronomers and astrophysicists, it would be even better if you provided the number of pixels per some solid angle of view, which depends on the optical parameters of the telescope's lenses. That is what is needed to understand how detailed the images actually will be for objects of interest, and what amounts of motion can be detected by comparing pictures taken at different times.

 

[Helio]

Here is a site that gives the additional, yet important, details.

"Weighing over 3000 kilograms, the 3200-megapixel camera is at the center of Rubin Observatory’s optical system, which also features an 8.4-meter combined primary/tertiary mirror and a 3.5-meter secondary mirror. "

The articles said it would scan the entire sky, so I thought it would be a space telescope. It will scan the southern sky, and the Rubin Obs. is in Chile.