A digital rendering of the LSST instrument, with human figures for scale. (Image courtesy LSST Corporation/NOAO)
Perched high atop Cerro Pachón in the Chilean Andes, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope will take the largest, fastest, most detailed pictures of the Southern Hemisphere’s night sky. With these images, researchers around the world will seek to reveal the nature of dark matter and dark energy—and to answer a host of other questions in astronomy and physics.
To do all this, LSST needs the largest digital camera ever built: a 3.2 billion-pixel behemoth that stands 6 feet tall and weighs more than 6000 pounds. Now, this impressive instrument has taken a significant step toward reality by receiving the Department of Energy’s “Critical Decision 1” approval.
The DOE-led camera team, which is based at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, will now begin a detailed engineering design, schedule and budget phase. Construction on the telescope is expected to begin in 2014, with first light five years after that.
Learn more about the CD-1 announcement in SLAC’s press release, and more about the telescope itself in “The LSST's supersized sweep of the sky,” published in the February 2011 issue of symmetry.