Scientists Have Taken The World’s First 3,200-Megapixel Photos by : Hannah Smith on : 23 Oct 2020 17:40 Scientists Have Taken The World's First 3,200-Megapixel PhotosSLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Scientists at a California lab have shared the world’s first-ever 3,200 megapixel images. Among the models? A head of broccoli.
The images, which are the largest ever taken in a single shot, were taken by sensors being developed by a team at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The sensors are set to be integrated into the world’s largest digital camera, which is currently under construction at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.
The laboratory also published images taken of a photo of Vera C. Rubin – a pioneering astronomer and advocate for women in science – and the camera’s assembly team. The photos are just as impressive as you’d expect, and scientists say it’s impossible to understand their true quality by looking at them on a regular phone or computer.
According to a blog published on the SLAC website, you would need 378 4K ultra high-definition television screens to display the images at full-size. The sensors used to take the photos capture images at a resolution so high that you could see a golf ball from 15 miles away.
Once in place at the observatory, the camera will be used to capture some of the highest-quality images of the universe ever taken from Earth, cataloguing more than 37 billion stars and galaxies. The camera is set to take one panorama of the southern hemisphere sky every few nights for 10 years, feeding the images into the observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.