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Billion Pixel Camera Ready to Map Milky Way in 3D

The European Space Agency has just stepped up the standards of the camera. They’ve created Gaia. In Greek mythology, the name Gaia refers to the Titan that is the grandmother or mother of most gods in Greek mythology. With that in mind, the name is more than appropriate for this monster of a camera. Gaia is a camera that will help map out the Milky Way in 3D, using one billion pixels that is. For a better camera comparison, that would be one thousand megapixels. It’s estimated that if one uses this camera on earth they could see “the thumbnails of the person on the moon.” Gaia is set to launch on a Soyuz-Fregat launch vehicle in 2013 .

(via ESA)

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Wen Duan

Wen studies electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, works as an IT, and participates in high-performance computation research. Along with consuming an absurd amount of television, movies, and books, she is infatuated with making the web her source of media as well as sharing them with anyone she can!


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