Scientists in the USA say they have built the largest digital camera in the world. The camera, which the team worked on for several years in a laboratory in the US state of California, is about the size of a small car and weighs three tons, said the National Accelerator laboratory in Palo Alto.
The camera’s largest lens has a diameter of almost 1.60 meters. In total, the camera has 189 sensors and 3.2 gigapixels – and, according to the researchers, could therefore record a golf ball from a distance of 24 kilometers.
After completion, the product, which costs around 168 million dollars (around 155 million euros), will be installed in an observatory in the Chilean Andes. The camera will then image the southern sky and collect data for a decade.
“Soon we will produce the best film and the most informative map of the night sky ever,” said the observatory’s director, Željko Ivezić.
