The world's largest digital camera aims to discover 20 billion galaxies

On a mountaintop in northern Chile, the world's largest digital camera is being prepared for operation. The giant eye, constantly training in the sky, says it will produce the largest, most data-rich movie ever US National Science Foundation website (NSF). Using state-of-the-art technology, an extremely precise ten-year time record of trillions of cosmic events and objects across the vastness of space and time will be created, aiming to revolutionize astronomy.

The camera is located in Chile, at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, where a huge telescope is nearing completion. The research station is located on Mount Cerro Pachón, which has a height of 2,750 meters, about 482 kilometers north of the Chilean capital, Santiago. According to Vera C. Rubin Observatory The camera has a resolution of 3200 megapixels, which is about the same number of pixels as 300 mobile phones. Each image taken must cover an area of ​​the sky of up to 40 full moons.

It is said that the technological miracle will come into effect early next year. Then, according to information, he will photograph the entire night sky in fine detail and reveal some of the deepest secrets of the universe.

The world's largest digital camera takes 1,000 photos every night

Every three nights, the telescope will image the entire visible sky and produce thousands of images that should allow astronomers to see everything that moves. According to a CNN report, experts believe that the Vera Rubin Telescope, named after the late pioneering American astronomer Vera Rubin, This way you will discover about 17 billion stars and 20 billion galaxies.

“There's a lot that Robin will do,” Claire Higgs, an astronomy expert at the observatory, told CNN. “We're exploring the sky in a way we've never done before and we can answer questions we've never thought about before.” The telescope will observe the night sky for exactly a decade and take 1,000 images every night. “Ten years from now we will be talking about new areas of science, new classes of things and new types of discoveries that I can't even say about now because I don't know them yet. And I think that's really exciting,” Higgs continued.

95% of the universe is unknown

According to the US National Science Foundation, the things that science thinks we know so far make up less than five percent of the universe. Knowledge is supposed to include everything and everyone on Earth as well as all the planets, stars, and galaxies in the universe – but the rest is literally invisible. “Uncovering the undiscovered properties of the mysterious 95% — made up of so-called dark matter and dark energy — would require a project spanning the entire universe,” the US National Science Foundation researchers wrote.

The project was launched in the early 2000s through private donations, including from billionaires Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates. Although Vera Rubin is an American national observatory, it was built in Chile for good reasons. “For optical telescopes, you need an elevated, dark, dry location,” Higgs says, noting problems with light pollution and humidity that reduce the sensitivity of the instruments. “You need a very calm and well-thought-out atmosphere, and the quality of the night sky in Chile is exceptional, which is why there are so many telescopes here,” she adds.