It鈥檚 time to take a look at the big picture. This unassuming image of a Romanesco cauliflower is actually one of the largest digital photographs ever snapped, at 3.2 gigapixels. Larger composite images have been produced, but this is the biggest single photograph ever made.
The image was taken with the sensor array that will eventually be part of the world鈥檚 largest digital camera, which will be attached to a telescope at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. There, it will take enormous images of the southern sky for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), a catalogue of astronomical objects of all kinds, from the nearest asteroids to the most distant galaxies.
The first test images with the array, including the cauliflower, are of objects chosen for their detail. They were projected onto the surface of the detectors using a pinhole camera. 鈥淚 wanted something that had an interesting structure and would just look cool,鈥� says Aaron Roodman at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, who is in charge of the camera鈥檚 assembly and testing.
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But more importantly, these photos prove that the detectors are working. Over the next few months, the rest of the camera will be assembled, and then the detectors will be off to Chile to explore the universe.
鈥淲e鈥檒l be taking a multicolour movie of the southern sky and we鈥檒l observe a huge variety of variable objects. We鈥檒l be able to see asteroids, look for planets in the solar system and look into the deep universe,鈥� says Roodman. 鈥淲e鈥檒l be able to study the expansion of the universe, the nature of dark energy, and dark matter both in our solar system and the universe at large.鈥�
To do all of this, the LSST needs the most powerful camera it can get. That camera will contain the 189 sensors used to take this image, which have such high resolution they could show you a golf ball about 24 kilometres away.
When the camera is fully assembled and attached to the telescope, which is planned to begin observations in 2021, it will be able to capture an area of sky equivalent to 40 full moons in each image. It is expected to take more than 200,000 pictures every year of the planned 10-year survey.
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