A big moment in the world of astronomy is about to happen. The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is ready to share the first images taken by the most powerful space camera ever built. This camera, called the LSST Camera, is expected to change how we see and understand the universe.

The telescope and camera have been in the making for over 20 years. The observatory is planning to create the ultimate movie of the night sky. It will keep scanning the sky again and again, making a wide and clear time-lapse record of the universe.

The LSST Camera is massive. It weighs around 3,000 kilograms — that’s almost as heavy as two small cars. It also has a 3,200-megapixel sensor. This is like putting together the resolution of 260 modern smartphone cameras. A single picture taken by this camera is so large that it would take hundreds of ultra-high-definition TVs to display it completely.

This camera can take photos of very distant galaxies and also very faint, nearby objects that were impossible to see before. To take such clear images, the camera’s sensors are kept very cold — at -100 degrees Celsius. This helps reduce errors in the photos and keeps the quality high.

Another amazing feature is the filter system. The camera can use six large colour filters — each one is 75 centimetres wide. These filters are labelled u, g, r, i, z, and y. They help the camera “see” from ultraviolet to infrared light. This gives it “superhuman” vision and lets scientists study the universe in new ways.

The camera was built in California at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and sent to Chile in May 2024. It will be installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope in early 2025. Once everything is set up, it will collect light from the sky and send the data to scientists around the world.

Over the next 10 years, this telescope and camera will help us learn more about the universe, how it changes, and what dark matter and dark energy are. The first pictures will be shown to the world on June 23.

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