Chile to Install World’s Largest Astronomy Camera on Edge of Atacama Desert

SANTIAGO—With a resolution above 3.2 gigapixels, a nearly three-ton weight and the ambitious task of carrying out an unprecedented decade-long exploration, the largest digital camera ever built for optical astronomy is ready to be installed under the clear skies of northern Chile. The pieces required to assemble the Vera C. Rubin Observatory—which includes a ground-based telescope and the camera—traveled in several vehicles to the summit of Cerro Pachón in the Coquimbo region, on the edge of the Atacama desert, some 565 kilometers north of Santiago. “Everything that we needed for operations [is] now on the summit and ready for checkout and hopefully for installation a little bit later this year,” said Stuartt Corder, chief science officer of the AURA association of universities and deputy director of the NOIRLab center, which will operate the observatory....