Ranked as the top U.S. ground-based national priority for astronomy for the current decade, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is currently under construction in Chile. LSST will survey the entire visible southern sky every few days for a decade – the widest, fastest and deepest view of the night sky ever observed. Its vast public archive of data will dramatically advance our knowledge of the dark energy and dark matter that make up 95 percent of the universe, as well as galaxy formation and potentially hazardous asteroids. 

SLAC is leading the design and fabrication of the LSST camera. Professor Steven M. Kahn is the overall Director of the LSST project, and SLAC personnel are also participating in the data management. The National Science Foundation is the lead agency for construction of the LSST. Additional financial support comes from the Department of Energy and private funding raised by the LSST Corporation.

Visit our LSST website for more info »

3-billion-pixel Camera

Construction of the LSST camera began in 2015 in SLAC's new clean room. The size of a small car and weighing more than 3 tons, the 3.2-gigapixel camera will be the largest digital camera ever built for ground-based optical astronomy. Displaying just one of its full-sky images would require 1,500 high-definition TV screens.

Watch the LSST camera video »