Farrin Abbott/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, the lab overseeing the design and fabrication of a 3.2-gigapixel digital camera for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), has successfully received the shipment of what may be the world's largest high-performance optical lens. The announcement was made earlier this month by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where researchers designed the optical assemblies for the LSST.
At this point in time, the 3.2-gigapixel digital camera intended for the LSST is 90% complete, according to LLNL. SLAC has been tapped to manage the subcomponent integration and final assembly of the $168 million camera, which is currently estimated for completion in early 2021.
Image credit: Farrin Abbott/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
Ball Aerospace in Colorado and Arizona Optical Systems built the lens assembly for the telescope, including the massive 1.57m (5.1ft) diameter L-1 optical lens and the smaller 1.2 (3.9ft) L-2 lens. According to LLNL, the L-1 is likely the largest high-performance optical lens ever created. It took around 17 hours to deliver the two lenses by truck to the SLAC in Menlo Park. Below are a few images of the delivery from the full Flickr album posted by SLAC:
Livermore physicist Scot Olivier largely credited LLNL optical scientists Lynn Seppala and Brian Bauman, as well as LLNL engineers Vincent Riot, Scott Winters, and Justin Wolfe, for making the massive optical lens a reality. Once fully completed, the LSST will be used to capture digital images of the entire visible portion of the southern sky, according to Livermore, offering what experts anticipate will be 'unprecedented details of the universe.'
ok.. light gather ability-- main reason for a single lens ?? say, 64 smaller lens, with zero gap between them, and say, 10% more surface area, would I think, bring in the same or more light.. ala a Flies eye. hexagon lens already heading to space, made up of multiple components because they are easier to build, keeping the cost down, while having little chance of a "fault" somewhere in the glass making up such a huge lens.
still not sure of the justification for a single huge lens, when multiple hex lens design are now " cutting edge".
and this article says d*** and squat about WHY they made such a huge lens. only that they delivered it. ( using a $3000 forklift no less, to unload it ).
Did you miss that the LSST is an f/1.2 optical system and that the primary mirror is almost 28 ft. in diameter and also that cost of lenses is roughly cube law with respect to linear dimension? :-)
27-ft (8.4-m) mirror, the width of a singles tennis court • 3200 megapixel camera • Each image the size of 40 full moons • 37 billion stars and galaxies • 10 year survey of the sky • 10 million alerts, 1000 pairs of exposures, 15 Terabytes of data .. every night!
Contrary to the numerous misinformed comments below, this assembly is a small component of the LSST 8.4 meter telescope with a primary mirror as wide as a tennis court.
See the LSST web page for much better information.
I love how they spent so many millions of dollars on this and then they just stick it on a forklift and load it up in a FedEx vehicle to ship it... Lol
It is a field corrector for the LSST 8.4 meter primary mirror (large as a tennis court). Odd that the reporter failed to note that, which may explain many of the ignorant comments.
No idea why they don’t just do stacking from a smaller sensor. Just look at the new pixel’s astro mode, that’s all you need. Could have saved a few bucks....
It'll be better. The small lightweight lens in smartphones can easily do VR while this big lens can't react as fast to vibrations. So that's win#1 for smartphones. Second win is because the Artificial Intelligence Neural Network chips are smarter than the dinosaur chips used in this big camera. Google and Apple spend a lot more than $168 million developing their hardware, which is the third win for smartphones.
It's all pretty obvious to me. Someone must have bribed a government official to build this useless glass lens. Don't see how any other conclusion could be reached.
I don't know. The biggest refractor (telescope without mirrors) is of 1897, diameter 1.02 m, Yerkes. Catadioptric systems contain one or more mirrors with a lens to correct aberrations. Schmidt telescopes have a thin corrector in front of the optical system, the biggest being 2m (Thüringen). So that would be the biggest lens. But this new one is of another system, containing a very big mirror (here 8.4 meter) and a corrector near the focal point. For such systems this is the biggest one. And maybe it is the heaviest les ever. (Schmidt correctors are thin.)
The Schmidt corrector in Thüringen is just 1.34 m wide. So the lens of this article is indeed the record holder. The lens is 155 cm wide and 7 cm thick. The total optical system is a beast of f/1.38, corrected also for UV and near infrared.
This is very very interesting. When I studied astronomy for one year fifty years ago, especially optics and mechanics of big instruments had my interest. I followed the field a bit through the decades and many things were invented that no one ever could have dreamed of. Very interesting optical systems, very nice correction elements like this one, impressing active and adaptic mirror support systems. This fast focus wide field system is a huge step forward. (And backward are most comments on it.)
@Romasito they're typically advertised for sensors, but they are for blowing dust in general. I use them on the front element of my lenses all the time and it works great.
I am not sure how rocket blower would blow off grime or fingerprints off the lense. You'd use lenspen for that, not a rocket blower to dust off - I mean, it is just glass, you can touch it with microfibre cloth etc - and you really shouldn't do that with a camera sensor.
@Romasito rocket blowers are for blowing DUST off of any surface, such as sensors, lenses, keyboards, etc. nobody is talking about finger prints and grime. This post of mine is a joke/pun at the size of this lens (an incredible achievement). You're taking this way too seriously. I could've chosen any common cleaning tool to make my joke. I chose a rocket blower. Nothing more to it.
Lol, I was not taking this seriously with my initial comment - but then @pollup went the serious route about "uuuhh rocket blowers are good to blow anything, even to start a bonfire" - and yet practically who would carry a rocket blower with them to dust off a lens? Seriously :D
I have a large rocket blower kept at home, and carry a medium sized one out on shoots (didn't like the small). Whether it's the occasional dust or piece of hair that lands on a lens' front element, or fine sand from a beach shoot, where the last thing you want to do is wipe the lens with a dry cloth out on the field to avoid scratches, it's good to have a blower on hand at all times. A blower doesn't clean everything on its own, but it is an essential tool to have in the cleaning kit. I shoot paid jobs though. If I just had a point and shoot and shot for personal use 100% of the time, I probably wouldn't bother and would just blow on it or use my t shirt.
Incredible project. I've just disassembled and reassembled my telescope to clean its 7" primary mirror and I wonder how much harder it is to build this monster. Thanks for sharing the video, it's awesome.
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