How LLNL Helped Build the World’s Largest Camera

For much of the past decade, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers have been designing major optical components for the world’s newest telescope. Located on a mountaintop in Chile, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will repeatedly scan the sky for 10 years and create an ultra-wide, ultra-high-definition time-lapse record of the universe—the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). LLNL has partnered with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to build the camera and designed a number of major optical components, including six LSSTCam filters that are some of the largest optical filters ever produced.