World's largest digital astronomical camera

There is an interesting article in the engineering design magazine DesingNews at,

Space Eyes See Back In Time , about development of the worlds largest digital astronomical camera. It might be the world's largest digital camera, although I am unaware of what is going on in the classified realm.

The Rubin Observatory, formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), currently under construction on Cerro Pachón in Chile, is an 8-meter-class telescope coupled to a 3.6 gigapixel camera – the world's largest digital camera ever fabricated for optical astronomy.

The article, presented as a series of slides, also discusses the the High-Resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-plus, or HAWC+, on the SOFIA telescope. SOFIA, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy, is a Boeing 747SP aircraft modified to carry a 2.7-meter telescope.

Brilliant stuff. I have some observations, though.

Firstly, that's a huge amount of data that they are recording, and they're doing it every night. Good thing that storage is 'cheap'!

Secondly - assuming I'm reading this correctly - look at slide no.5. Is that an actual photosite on the sensor? Because that fill area is sh!thouse. It's, what, 5%? It's obviously very sensitive, of course.

As for SOFIA: I used to wonder about where there were no airborne cameras. Well, I was wrong - there are!

Karim said: "As for SOFIA: I used to wonder about where there were no airborne cameras. Well, I was wrong - there are!"

There is a long history of airborne astronomy, dating back to the 1960's.

In the early 1970's I was working as an engineer for Lockheed on NASA projects. NASA Ames is located at Moffet Field, and Lockheed Sunnyvale is located next door. At the time, there was a Learjet stationed at Ames that was equipped with a small 12 inch telescope for exploring the feasibility of airborne astronomy. This evolved into NASA Ames acquiring a Lockheed C-141 and equipping it with a one meter telescope equipped for infrared astronomy. It was operational in 1973 or 1974, and was successfully employed for twenty more years. It was named the Kuiper Airborne Observatory (KAO), after astronomer Gerald Kuiper, for whom the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system is named. SOFIA is the successor to KAO.

While I was at Lockheed, there were talks of equipping a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance aircraft for airborne astronomy. I recall seeing a U-2 parked in a hanger at Moffet Field. I find no mention of using a U-2 for airborne astronomy in a Google search, so I presume that the proposal was not pursued. I think it reasonable that the much larger C-141 was determined to be more useful than the U-2, despite the U-2's ability to fly to much higher altitudes.

Thanks for this link, @Glenn McCreery! Funnily enough, I've been thinking about this topic recently. I've just finished re-reading Dr Jacob Bronowski's excellent (and

after 45 years still very relevant) book ''The Ascent of Man'. The book is based on a series of TV programmes that he made for the BBC in the the 1970's.

One of his chapters (programmes) is on the development of astronomy and optics in Europe (Kepler, Copernicus and especially Galileo). Galileo was perhaps the 'father' of the modern telescope and lenses. Unfortunately, his observations which supported his predecessors brought him in conflict with the conservative Catholic Church. Under threat of torture in his 70's, he was forced to publically retract his conclusions. Luckily, his work was read and further developed in 'Protestant' Northern Europe. Still, the sheer excitement Galileo expresses in seeing the stars and planets through his increasingly improving telescopes clearly comes through from his letters quoted in 'The Ascent of Man'.

That made me wonder what we can now see (with global distributed and space-based telescopes) that Galileo couldn't in his wildest dreams have imagined.

Mike

In the early 1970's I was working as an engineer for Lockheed on NASA projects.

Respect. :-) Thanks for the info, too. I have a quick question: would balloon-mounted telescopes be useful to astronomers, or do they move around too much?

Balloon-borne telescopes have been and continue to be used. A quick Wickipedia search gives a list of a dozen missions. Balloon flights are limited to a few days duration and the possibility of crash landings. However, balloons can go to higher altitudes than either KAO or SOFIA, so they are suitable for viewing hard (high energy) X-ray and soft (low energy) gamma ray emitting objects, but not soft X-rays, which are absorbed by the remaining atmosphere.

The first X-ray emitting astronomical sources were discovered using rocket-borne detectors. The first detection of a source outside the solar system was made in the 1960's by a US team lead by Riccardo Giacconi, who received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2002 for the discovery.

This one may still hold some kind of record

Full-plate camera!

This one may still hold some kind of record

 

Full-plate camera!

[ATTACH=full]1336375[/ATTACH]

Looks like it might fit on a baloon.

Thanks for this link, @Glenn McCreery! Funnily enough, I've been thinking about this topic recently. I've just finished re-reading Dr Jacob Bronowski's excellent (and

after 45 years still very relevant) book ''The Ascent of Man'. The book is based on a series of TV programmes that he made for the BBC in the the 1970's.

 

One of his chapters (programmes) is on the development of astronomy and optics in Europe (Kepler, Copernicus and especially Galileo). Galileo was perhaps the 'father' of the modern telescope and lenses. Unfortunately, his observations which supported his predecessors brought him in conflict with the conservative Catholic Church. Under threat of torture in his 70's, he was forced to publically retract his conclusions. Luckily, his work was read and further developed in 'Protestant' Northern Europe. Still, the sheer excitement Galileo expresses in seeing the stars and planets through his increasingly improving telescopes clearly comes through from his letters quoted in 'The Ascent of Man'.

 

That made me wonder what we can now see (with global distributed and space-based telescopes) that Galileo couldn't in his wildest dreams have imagined.

 

Mike

Below is a photo I made with Galileo in mind. I wanted to try to simulate what Galileo saw while observing Jupiter's moons. As I recall, in his notes he has drawings done once a night, but perhaps there were some done at faster intervals which would look more like this photo. The four images were taken 30 minutes apart with a Lumix FZ1000 at 400 mm zoom, without a telescope. It is surprisingly easy to get shots of Jupiter's moons with just a telephoto lens and tripod. I believe it was Galileo's discovery that Jupiter has moons that revolve around the planet and not around the earth which spelled his doom with the Catholic church.

Watching Jupiter's moons move by Tom Yin, on Flickr

Below is a photo I made with Galileo in mind. I wanted to try to simulate what Galileo saw while observing Jupiter's moons. As I recall, in his notes he has drawings done once a night, but perhaps there were some done at faster intervals which would look more like this photo. The four images were taken 30 minutes apart with a Lumix FZ1000 at 400 mm zoom, without a telescope. It is surprisingly easy to get shots of Jupiter's moons with just a telephoto lens and tripod. I believe it was Galileo's discovery that Jupiter has moons that revolve around the planet and not around the earth which spelled his doom with the Catholic church.

 

Watching Jupiter's moons move by Tom Yin, on Flickr

You are, of course, referring to the Medician Stars?