Yup, it actually happened. Stanford researchers have invented a super a humongous 3200MP camera at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. But why? Well, apparently it's meant for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) telescope in Chile so that the researchers can study dark energy, dark matter and create the “largest astronomical movie of all time”.
As you can see from the cover image above, that's the whole camera and it's big as a table. With that 3200MP sensor at hand, you won't be able to view a 3200MP photo on a 4K TV, but 378 of them to view them in full size. That's the equivalent of being able to see a golf ball perfectly from 24 kilometres away so in other words, the camera can capture objects 100 million times dimmer than our naked eye.
According to their blog post, the camera consists of 189 sensors dubbed as a charge-coupled device (CCD) with 16MP for each. Then, they packaged the CCDs into 21 rafts + 4 special rafts that turn it into the camera's focal plane. In translation, that effectively produce 3.2 billion pixels and each raft cost $3 million.
It took 6 months for the team to build the 3200MP camera and it's not even completed yet. However, being able to take a photo shot is probably the first important step and it will take them a few more months to build up the rest of the body. It is estimated that the final testing will commence in mid-2021, stay tuned for more trending tech news at TechNave.com.
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