The Vera Rubin Observatory and LSST Camera

Researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, the world’s largest digital camera ever built for astronomy (Hannah Pollek second from right). The LSST Camera is roughly the size of a small car and weighs three tons. It features a five-foot wide front lens and a 3,200-megapixel sensor that will be cooled to -100 degrees Celsius to reduce noise. The camera, scheduled to start capturing images in early-mid 2025, will live atop the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s Simonyi Survey Telescope in Chile where it is tasked with observing the night sky for a decade with the goal of providing a trove of data that scientists will study to try and understand some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, including the nature of dark energy and dark matter.

In this presentation Hannah Pollek will give an overview of the Vera Rubin Observatory as a whole, with emphasis on the construction of the LSST Camera at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She will also talk about the science goals of the project during its 10 year survey, the nationwide and international collaborations in building it, and the challenges of handling the immense amounts of data that will be taken each night.

Speaker: Hannah Pollek, LSST Project Team, SLAC