Engineers and scientists at the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory working on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) at Menlo Park, California, have a new cleanroom in which they will soon begin to assemble the largest digital camera ever built.
The cleanroom was built by Clean Rooms West, headquartered in Tustin, California.
Beginning in 2022, LSST’s 3,200-megapixel camera will take snapshots of the night sky with unparalleled detail. Over its planned 10 years of operation, it will create an archive of tens of billions of cosmic objects and their movements – a treasure trove for researchers studying all kinds of astronomical phenomena.
'The completion of the cleanroom is a big milestone for the lab,' said LSST Director Steven Kahn. 'It’s the first major piece of LSST infrastructure here at SLAC.'
Having a clean environment for the assembly of LSST’s camera is necessary because any dust settling on the image sensors would degrade the quality of the precision device. The air inside the new facility is about 1,000 times 'cleaner' than ordinary air. The main 1,875ft2 work space has a ceiling height of 24ft so that the approximately 10ft camera body can be mounted vertically for optical alignment and final testing.
'Getting the cleanroom built took a lot of work by many people,' said Aaron Roodman, SLAC’s system scientist for the LSST camera integration and testing. 'It’s due to their efforts that we got it done in only eight months.'
Over the next few months, researchers will install work benches and bring in some of their equipment. The camera assembly will be spread out over the next four years.
SLAC is a multi-programme laboratory exploring frontier questions in photon science, astrophysics, particle physics and accelerator research. It is operated by Stanford University for the US Department of Energy's Office of Science.
