World's Largest Digital Camera
Condensed from Popular Mechanics, Nov. 2003, pp.34,37. by Paul EisensteinQUEST, a new installation at the Palomar Observatory's Oschin Telescope near San Diego, is the world's largest astronomical digital camera, designed and built by astrophysicists from Yale and Indiana Universities. It uses an array of 112 CCDs, able to deliver data immediately, allowing researchers around the world to share QUEST's vision in real time. Unitl now, the largest astronomical camera had only 30 CCDs.
Designed for wide-field viewing, QUEST's massive CCD display will permit researchers to cover an unprecedented 500 square degrees a night. QUEST is expected to generate an unprecedented amount of astronomical data in digital form, more than 1 terabyte a month. A terabyte is 1 million megabytes of data.. That is equivalent of 2 million books, and by 2008 QUEST could generate more than twice as much information as is stored in the Library of Congress.
The data will be transmitted over a special 45-megabits-per-second HPWREN, to image-processing labs and university observation centers all over the country. Even amateur astronomers will be able to share in the digital action. Plans call for QUEST's data to be made available on the Internet through the National Virtual Observatory. Updates will be posted on various Web sites, including www.physics.yale.edu/quest/palomar.html
