Instruments
LSST Science Camera
The LSST Science Camera is the world's largest digital camera. It has 3.2 Gigapixels over a 9.6 square degree field of view and six optical filters.
See also the camera webpage for a public audience.
Focal plane
The LSST Science Camera is composed of 189 individual charge-coupled devices (CCDs) arranged into 21 "rafts". Each pixel is 0.2 arcseconds on the sky, and so each CCD of 4,000 by 4,000 pixels covers 13.3 by 13.3 arcminutes (0.22 by 0.22 degrees). Every CCD has 16 amplifiers, each reading 1 million pixels, enabling the full focal plane of of 3.2 Gigapixels to be read out in 2 seconds.
Components
The LSST Science Camera is about 1.65 meters across and 3 meters long, and contains lenses, filters, shutter, sensors, cryostats and electronics.
The shutter's two sides slide back and forth to expose and then cover the focal plane. The nominal shutter open/close time is 1 second.
The filter changer mechanism - which holds 5 of the 6 LSST filters at a time - moves a filter in and out of the light path. The nominal filter change time is 2 minutes.
Filters
The LSST's six filters are u, g, r, i, z, and y. At any given time, five will be loaded into the camera's filter carousel, with a sixth filter swapped in every couple of weeks (depending on moon illumination, survey strategy, etc.).
Visit GitHub to download the filter throughputs shown below.
Commissioning Camera
ComCam was mounted on the telescope for seven weeks in late 2024. It is the same as the LSST Science Camera but contains only the central raft of 9 CCDs.
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