Stunning drone footage has revealed the incredible progress on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope – a massive instrument that will one day produce the ‘deepest, widest image of the universe’ ever captured.
Construction on the telescope in Chile began in 2015, with plans for it to begin operations around 2022.
Now, nearly three years later, the new video shows how the enormous mountaintop facility has begun to take shape.
Stunning drone footage has revealed the incredible progress on the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope – a massive instrument that will one day produce the ‘deepest, widest image of the universe’ ever captured
The video, published this week by the LSST team, was submitted by Assembly Integration Verification Manager Jacques Sebag, who captured the amazing view using a drone.
At the time, the team was working with subcontractor Besalco to move the facility’s mobile roof to a flatter area on the north side of the building.
According to a timeline of the project’s construction plan, it will achieve engineering first light around 2019-2020.
Then, operations are set to begin around 2022-2023.

Construction on the telescope in Chile began in 2015, with plans for it to begin operations around 2022. Now, nearly three years later, the new video shows how the enormous mountaintop facility has begun to take shape
The LSST will capture more than 800 images every night, to capture the entire visible sky twice a week, the team says.
It will be equipped with a 3.2-gigapixel camera – a powerful instrument that would require 1500 high-definitions screens to display just one of its images.
The vast camera will then be blasted into space, forming the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
‘Each patch of sky it images will be visited 1000 times during the survey,’ according to the LSST team.

The LSST will be equipped with a 3.2-gigapixel camera – a powerful instrument that would require 1500 high-definitions screens to display just one of its images
‘With a light-gathering power equal to 6.7-m diameter primary mirror, each of its 30-second observations will be able to detect objects 10 million times fainter than visible with the human eye.
‘A powerful data system will compare new with previous images to detect changes in brightness and position of the objects as big as far-distant galaxy clusters and as small as near-by asteroids.’
Assembled at the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries.
The Department of Energy approved the start of construction in September 2015.

According to a timeline of the project’s construction plan, it will achieve engineering first light around 2019-2020. Then, operations are set to begin around 2022-2023


The vast camera will then be blasted into space, forming the heart of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). ‘Each patch of sky it images will be visited 1000 times during the survey,’ according to the LSST team

At the time the video was captured, the team was working with subcontractor Besalco to move the facility’s mobile roof to a flatter area on the north side of the building
The construction milestone, known as Critical Decision 3, marked the last major approval decision before the acceptance of the finished camera, said LSST Director Steven Kahn at the time: ‘Now we can go ahead and procure components and start building it.’
Starting in 2022, LSST will take digital images of the entire visible southern sky every few nights from atop a mountain called Cerro Pachón in Chile.
It will produce a wide, deep and fast survey of the night sky, cataloguing by far the largest number of stars and galaxies ever observed.

During a 10-year time frame, LSST will detect tens of billions of objects—the first time a telescope will observe more galaxies than there are people on Earth – and will create movies of the sky with unprecedented details

Assembled at the DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the camera will be the eye of LSST, revealing unprecedented details of the universe and helping unravel some of its greatest mysteries
During a 10-year time frame, LSST will detect tens of billions of objects—the first time a telescope will observe more galaxies than there are people on Earth – and will create movies of the sky with unprecedented details.
The telescope’s camera – the size of a small car and weighing more than three tons – will capture full-sky images at such high resolution that it would take 1,500 high-definition television screens to display just one of them.

The construction milestone in 2015 known as Critical Decision 3, marked the last major approval decision before the acceptance of the finished camera, said LSST Director Steven Kahn at the time: ‘Now we can go ahead and procure components and start building it’