• Question: what is the diameter of the biggest camera?

    Asked by #Jack to Flavia, Giuditta on 11 Nov 2015. This question was also asked by Toby, s14mdziunka.
    • Photo: Giuditta Perversi

      Giuditta Perversi answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      Uhmmmm, can we consider the Hubble Space Telescope a sort of absolutely huge camera?
      If so, the mirror has 2.4 m of diameter!

      The telescope is in orbit around the Earth and it’s the source of most of the amazing space picture that you can find around. I know they are planning to make another telescope, the James Webb, with a mirror of 6.5 m of diameter, but it would work in the infrared, not in the visible light.

    • Photo: Flavia de Almeida Dias

      Flavia de Almeida Dias answered on 12 Nov 2015:

      If you mean instead the big “camera” I work with, which is the ATLAS experiment, its diameter is about 25 meters. It is also 45 meters long, and weighs about 7,000 tons. It is about half as big as the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris and weighs the same as the Eiffel Tower or a hundred 747 jets (empty).

      ATLAS is a detector which works very similarly to digital a camera, to take pictures of particles which are produced in the proton proton collisions at the LHC. ATLAS brings experimental physics into new territory. Most exciting is the completely unknown surprise – new processes and particles that would change our understanding of energy, matter, and the Universe.

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