The US Department of Energy has given the go-ahead to a 3.2 billion-pixel digital camera that
could one day survey the entire visible sky every week, and
publicly release six million gigabytes of data per year.
The enormous camera is called the Large Synoptic Survey
Telescope camera (LSST), and when it's perched atop the Chilean
mountain of Cerro Pachón it will gaze into deep space, snapping
wide cosmic vistas.
The telescopic lens will sport 189 sensors, and a primary mirror
over eight metres across. Astronomers will use it to answer
questions about dark energy and dark matter, and aid into near-Earth asteroids,
Kuiper belt objects, and the very structure of our galaxy.
The DOE has given the project "Critical Decision 1", which means
the camera can now begin a detailed engineering design, schedule,
and budget phase. If all continues as planned, construction on the
telescope will begin in 2014.
The LSST has been designed by SLAC National Accelerator
Laboratory. The DOE will fund the design and construction of the
camera, but the full cost and logistics of the new telescope are
being shared by the DOE, the National Science Foundation, and a web
of public and private organisations around the world.
The European Space Agency has a monster camera of its own. When
the spacecraft Gaia lifts off from ESA's Spaceport at Kourou in
French Guiana it will be bristling with more than 150 sensors,
arranged in a mosaic that forms a single, billion-pixel camera. Gaia will launch 2013.