The Rubin Observatory’s central camera arrived at its mountaintop location in the Andes, Chile after a journey that spanned two decades of development. The 3-ton digital camera is the largest ever built for astronomy and measures 1.5 meters wide. To ensure safe transportation from its manufacturing site at SLAC National Acceleration Laboratory in California to its mountaintop destination, scientists and engineers conducted a simulation with a similar-sized replica camera in 2021.
On May 14, the camera was delivered to San Francisco airport for a 10-hour flight to Chile on a Boeing 747 cargo plane. After landing at Santiago International Airport, the camera and nine trucks made their way to Cerro Pachón station via a winding 35 km dirt road that led them up to the mountain peak more than 2,713 meters above sea level. Subsequent testing confirmed that the camera arrived in perfect condition, setting the stage for its installation at the observatory.
The LSST camera will conduct a decade-long study of the universe by taking panoramic images of the southern sky every few evenings, helping to catalog billions of objects. Its remarkable resolution will allow astronomers to gather clues about dark matter and dark energy as well as study weak gravitational lensing. This significant milestone marks another step closer for scientists and astronomers in unlocking the mysteries of our universe.
