1,400 Megapixel Pan-STARRS Telescope Online

ElectricSteve writes: Astronomers in Hawaii have announced they’ve successfully managed to boot up the Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System) telescope. Working from dusk-to-dawn every night Pan-STARRS is able to map one-sixth of the sky each month, allowing astronomers to track every moving object, calculate their orbits and identify any potential threats to Earth. There are four Pan STARRS cameras in total, each capable of capturing around 1.4 billion pixels over a sensor measuring 40 centimeters square. The focal plane of each camera contains an almost complete 64x64 array of CCD devices, each containing approximately 600 x 600 pixels, for a total resolution of 1.4 gigapixels.