“The idea is you’re looking deep into the heavens,” says Professor Aaron Roodman of the Dept. of Particle Physics & Astrophysics at the SLAC about the aim of the Rubin Observatory project. It began over two decades ago as an idea and is now nearing completion with the collective efforts of multiple teams and countries. I had a very fruitful interview with Professor Roodman the other day. He detailed the story behind the project and the benefits for astronomy that it intends to provide. During the course of the project, his team was responsible for the central optics system behind the telescope. An effort that culminated in the Rubin Observatory project being awarded the Guinness Record for the highest resolution sensor ever created for a camera. It’s also the largest digital camera ever built in terms of size, housing the largest lens ever made.

On a personal note, this interview was fascinating to be a part of. I got to spend an hour interviewing one of the brightest minds behind the Rubin Observatory project. I have been hugely interested in astrophysics since childhood (and also probably the biggest X-Files fan in the region). Listening to Professor Roodman explain technical details of the optical portions of the telescopes had me starry-eyed (pun unintended). This camera will likely stake claim to sensor resolution and size bragging rights for many years to come.

The scope of the Rubin Observatory project is pretty well defined, but the potential is seemingly limitless. It could end up photographing celestial objects and occurrences that may never have been documented before. Even more interesting is that good portions of these images and data will be available to the public for viewing and analysis. I wish I lived closer to California to be able to take a tour of the SLAC facility. For now, though, I will be eagerly looking forward to the day that the first images come from the Rubin Observatory telescope in 2023.

The Phoblographer: Hi Aaron. For the benefit of our readers, please tell us what has been the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center’s involvement on the Rubin Observatory project (previously known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope – LSST) to date.

Aaron Roodman: We call it SLAC for short. SLAC is a national laboratory here in the US, funded by the Department of Energy. Our involvement in this project dates back to 2003, well before this project was funded. Through that time, we’ve been responsible for the camera. There’s another group that’s responsible for the telescope; well, we’re all one team, but kind of subgroups. So our team at SLAC is responsible for the camera. Some people at SLAC have been working on it since 2003. This is typical jargon for telescopes – the telescope often refers to the set of mirrors, and then there’s an instrument which may have its own optics and has whatever measurement apparatus you want. In our case at the Rubin Observatory, we only have one instrument – we call it the camera. It has three giant lenses and a 3.2 gigapixel focal plane.

The project was named after Vera Rubin, who was a very distinguished astronomer. She deserves a lot of the credit for discovering what is seen as some of the best evidence for dark matter in the universe. A very distinguished astronomer, she passed away a few years ago. There was a process; LSST, we decided it wasn’t the greatest name. Getting named for a prominent female American astronomer is a great way to go.

The Phoblographer: If I’m not mistaken, the work on the camera for the telescope began in 2007 when digital photography was still pretty much in its infancy in the professional sector. How did the team arrive at choosing a 3200 megapixel sensor for the camera?

Aaron Roodman: Well, we still have a bit to go. But we’re getting close. Our camera is scheduled to be finished at Stanford next year, next summer. We’ll ship it to the telescope in Chile. It’ll take some time, and it’ll take some time to get it on the telescope and working. Rig...