This 3200MP Camera Takes Photos That Require 400 4K TVs To Be Fully Displayed

The newest space camera can take 3.2-billion-pixel photos, the largest photos ever taken in a single shot.

The new camera is designed with the aim to survey the southern sky from the Rubin Observatory in Chile for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). The camera is expected to help us look back into the universe and figure how mysteries such as how galaxies evolved as well as how the theories of dark matter match with our reality.

However, before deploying it, scientists tested the new camera on some vegetables right on Earth. In observing space, the more light captured by a telescope or camera, the better. With this camera’s capability to observe some of the dimmest light in the universe, scientists hope to peer back into the history of the cosmos.

To give such sensitivity to a camera, scientists from SLAC Lab at Stanford University came up with a structure much larger than the regular smartphone camera.

The camera is as big as an SUV, featuring 189 different light sensors, all of which can bring 16 MP of data, resulting in a total of 3000 megapixels of data. To compare, the largest smartphone camera now is 108MP.

The scientists then grouped these sensors together in sets of nine to build science rafts, each weighing 20 pounds with a cost of $3 million. As a result, they got 21 science rafts along with four non-imaging rafts, which were slotted together, forming the final camera. This process was extremely delicate, as stated by Hannah Pollek, a mechanical engineer at SLAC, who said:

“The combination of high stakes and tight tolerances made this project very challenging. But with a versatile team we pretty much nailed it.”

Before the camera was transferred to Chile, the scientists took a few photos with it, including the night sky, broccoli, and Vera Rubin. These 3200MP photos are the largest photos ever taken in one shot and required 400 4K TV screens to fully display them.

The next step of using this camera is to obtain a better understanding of the universe.

“It’s a milestone that brings us a big step closer to exploring fundamental questions about the universe in ways we haven’t been able to before.”

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