The LSST Camera (LSSTCam)

Citation: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory & NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, The LSST Camera (LSSTCam) (2025) DOI Logo https://doi.org/10.71929/rubin/2571927 [BibTeX]

The LSST Camera (LSSTCam) was mounted on the Simonyi Survey Telescope in March 2025. LSSTCam will be used to take data for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time [Ivezić et al., 2019]. It has 3.2 Gigapixels over a 9.6 square degree field of view and six optical filters.

The camera mounted on the Simonyi Survey Telescope

Focal plane

The LSST Camera focal plane is composed of 189 individual science charge-coupled devices (CCDs), arranged into 21 “rafts,” along with 8 wavefront and 8 guider CCDs located in 4 additional corner rafts. Each pixel is 0.2 arcseconds on the sky, and so each CCD of approximately 4,000 by 4,000 pixels covers 13.3 by 13.3 arcminutes (0.22 by 0.22 degrees). Every CCD has 16 amplifiers, each reading 1 million pixels, enabling the full focal plane of of 3.2 Gigapixels to be read out in 2 seconds.

The CCDs were supplied by two vendors, ITL and e2v. All nine detectors in a given raft are from the same vendor. Differences between sensors are accounted for during the Instrument Signature Removal (ISR) stage of image processing by the LSST Science Pipelines [Rubin Observatory Science Pipelines Developers, 2025].

A visualization of the LSSTCam focal plane.

Figure 1: A depiction of the focal plane of the LSST Camera.

Key numbers

Except for the gap sizes, these numbers come from Table 6 of [Roodman et al., 2024].

  • Inter-raft gap size (x, y) [mm]: 0.50, 0.50

  • Inter-sensor gap size, (x, y) [mm]: 0.28, 0.25 (e2v); 0.27, 0.27 (ITL)

  • Serial charge transfer inefficiency [%]: 7.3 e-6 (e2v); 1.5 e-4 (ITL)

  • Parallel charge transfer inefficiency [%]: 1.1 e-5 (e2v); 1.2 e-6 (ITL)

  • Dark current [e-/pix/s]: 0.023 (e2v); 0.021 (ITL)

  • Photon Transfer Curve (PTC) turnoff [e-]: 103000 (e2v); 129000 (ITL)

  • Read noise [e-]: 5.40 (e2v); 6.21 (ITL)

  • Gain [e-/ADU]: 1.51 (e2v); 1.68 (ITL)

Filters

The LSST’s six filters are u, g, r, i, z, and y. At any given time, five will be loaded into the camera’s filter carousel, with a sixth filter swapped in every couple of weeks (depending on moon illumination, survey strategy, etc.).

For each filter, the effective wavelength – defined as the mean wavelength by the system response in energy units – and the full width at have maximum (FWHM) – defined as the wavelength interval between the points where the system throughput drops to 50% of its peak value – are shown in the following table.

Band

eff_wavelen (nm)

fwhm (nm)

u

372.4

46.3

g

480.7

148.5

r

622.1

139.9

i

755.9

128.6

z

868.0

104.0

y

975.3

86.2

The data for this table can be found in the throughputs package.

Citing LSSTCam

Use of the correct formal citation strings and keywords ensures that all uses of data from LSSTCam can be found using community tools.

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.71929/rubin/2571927 (refers to this document)

    • Use this DOI when referring to the instrument specifically; otherwise a dataset DOI may be more appropriate (see the documentation for the specific data release you are using) or a technical reference such as Roodman et al. (2024) given below.

  • IVOA ObsCore keywords: facility_name = Rubin:Simonyi, instrument_name = LSSTCam

  • AAS facility keyword: Rubin:Simonyi or, for specificity, Rubin:Simonyi (LSSTCam)

  • Minor Planet Center observatory code: X05

Technical Documentation

References

[1]

Aaron Roodman, Yousuke Utsumi, and Sean MacBride. LSST Camera Electro-Optical Test Results. Commissioning Technical Note SITCOMTN-148, NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, December 2024. URL: https://sitcomtn-148.lsst.io/.

[2]

Željko Ivezić, Steven M. Kahn, J. Anthony Tyson, Bob Abel, Emily Acosta, Robyn Allsman, David Alonso, Yusra AlSayyad, Scott F. Anderson, John Andrew, James Roger P. Angel, George Z. Angeli, Reza Ansari, Pierre Antilogus, Constanza Araujo, Robert Armstrong, Kirk T. Arndt, Pierre Astier, Éric Aubourg, Nicole Auza, Tim S. Axelrod, Deborah J. Bard, Jeff D. Barr, Aurelian Barrau, James G. Bartlett, Amanda E. Bauer, Brian J. Bauman, Sylvain Baumont, Ellen Bechtol, Keith Bechtol, Andrew C. Becker, Jacek Becla, Cristina Beldica, Steve Bellavia, Federica B. Bianco, Rahul Biswas, Guillaume Blanc, Jonathan Blazek, Roger D. Blandford, Josh S. Bloom, Joanne Bogart, Tim W. Bond, Michael T. Booth, Anders W. Borgland, Kirk Borne, James F. Bosch, Dominique Boutigny, Craig A. Brackett, Andrew Bradshaw, William Nielsen Brandt, Michael E. Brown, James S. Bullock, Patricia Burchat, David L. Burke, Gianpietro Cagnoli, Daniel Calabrese, Shawn Callahan, Alice L. Callen, Jeffrey L. Carlin, Erin L. Carlson, Srinivasan Chandrasekharan, Glenaver Charles-Emerson, Steve Chesley, Elliott C. Cheu, Hsin-Fang Chiang, James Chiang, Carol Chirino, Derek Chow, David R. Ciardi, Charles F. Claver, Johann Cohen-Tanugi, Joseph J. Cockrum, Rebecca Coles, Andrew J. Connolly, Kem H. Cook, Asantha Cooray, Kevin R. Covey, Chris Cribbs, Wei Cui, Roc Cutri, Philip N. Daly, Scott F. Daniel, Felipe Daruich, Guillaume Daubard, Greg Daues, William Dawson, Francisco Delgado, Alfred Dellapenna, Robert de Peyster, Miguel de Val-Borro, Seth W. Digel, Peter Doherty, Richard Dubois, Gregory P. Dubois-Felsmann, Josef Durech, Frossie Economou, Tim Eifler, Michael Eracleous, Benjamin L. Emmons, Angelo Fausti Neto, Henry Ferguson, Enrique Figueroa, Merlin Fisher-Levine, Warren Focke, Michael D. Foss, James Frank, Michael D. Freemon, Emmanuel Gangler, Eric Gawiser, John C. Geary, Perry Gee, Marla Geha, Charles J. B. Gessner, Robert R. Gibson, D. Kirk Gilmore, Thomas Glanzman, William Glick, Tatiana Goldina, Daniel A. Goldstein, Iain Goodenow, Melissa L. Graham, William J. Gressler, Philippe Gris, Leanne P. Guy, Augustin Guyonnet, Gunther Haller, Ron Harris, Patrick A. Hascall, Justine Haupt, Fabio Hernandez, Sven Herrmann, Edward Hileman, Joshua Hoblitt, John A. Hodgson, Craig Hogan, James D. Howard, Dajun Huang, Michael E. Huffer, Patrick Ingraham, Walter R. Innes, Suzanne H. Jacoby, Bhuvnesh Jain, Fabrice Jammes, M. James Jee, Tim Jenness, Garrett Jernigan, Darko Jevremović, Kenneth Johns, Anthony S. Johnson, Margaret W. G. Johnson, R. Lynne Jones, Claire Juramy-Gilles, Mario Jurić, Jason S. Kalirai, Nitya J. Kallivayalil, Bryce Kalmbach, Jeffrey P. Kantor, Pierre Karst, Mansi M. Kasliwal, Heather Kelly, Richard Kessler, Veronica Kinnison, David Kirkby, Lloyd Knox, Ivan V. Kotov, Victor L. Krabbendam, K. Simon Krughoff, Petr Kubánek, John Kuczewski, Shri Kulkarni, John Ku, Nadine R. Kurita, Craig S. Lage, Ron Lambert, Travis Lange, J. Brian Langton, Laurent Le Guillou, Deborah Levine, Ming Liang, Kian-Tat Lim, Chris J. Lintott, Kevin E. Long, Margaux Lopez, Paul J. Lotz, Robert H. Lupton, Nate B. Lust, Lauren A. MacArthur, Ashish Mahabal, Rachel Mandelbaum, Thomas W. Markiewicz, Darren S. Marsh, Philip J. Marshall, Stuart Marshall, Morgan May, Robert McKercher, Michelle McQueen, Joshua Meyers, Myriam Migliore, Michelle Miller, David J. Mills, Connor Miraval, Joachim Moeyens, Fred E. Moolekamp, David G. Monet, Marc Moniez, Serge Monkewitz, Christopher Montgomery, Christopher B. Morrison, Fritz Mueller, Gary P. Muller, Freddy Muñoz Arancibia, Douglas R. Neill, Scott P. Newbry, Jean-Yves Nief, Andrei Nomerotski, Martin Nordby, Paul O'Connor, John Oliver, Scot S. Olivier, Knut Olsen, William O'Mullane, Sandra Ortiz, Shawn Osier, Russell E. Owen, Reynald Pain, Paul E. Palecek, John K. Parejko, James B. Parsons, Nathan M. Pease, J. Matt Peterson, John R. Peterson, Donald L. Petravick, M. E. Libby Petrick, Cathy E. Petry, Francesco Pierfederici, Stephen Pietrowicz, Rob Pike, Philip A. Pinto, Raymond Plante, Stephen Plate, Joel P. Plutchak, Paul A. Price, Michael Prouza, Veljko Radeka, Jayadev Rajagopal, Andrew P. Rasmussen, Nicolas Regnault, Kevin A. Reil, David J. Reiss, Michael A. Reuter, Stephen T. Ridgway, Vincent J. Riot, Steve Ritz, Sean Robinson, William Roby, Aaron Roodman, Wayne Rosing, Cecille Roucelle, Matthew R. Rumore, Stefano Russo, Abhijit Saha, Benoit Sassolas, Terry L. Schalk, Pim Schellart, Rafe H. Schindler, Samuel Schmidt, Donald P. Schneider, Michael D. Schneider, William Schoening, German Schumacher, Megan E. Schwamb, Jacques Sebag, Brian Selvy, Glenn H. Sembroski, Lynn G. Seppala, Andrew Serio, Eduardo Serrano, Richard A. Shaw, Ian Shipsey, Jonathan Sick, Nicole Silvestri, Colin T. Slater, J. Allyn Smith, R. Chris Smith, Shahram Sobhani, Christine Soldahl, Lisa Storrie-Lombardi, Edward Stover, Michael A. Strauss, Rachel A. Street, Christopher W. Stubbs, Ian S. Sullivan, Donald Sweeney, John D. Swinbank, Alexander Szalay, Peter Takacs, Stephen A. Tether, Jon J. Thaler, John Gregg Thayer, Sandrine Thomas, Adam J. Thornton, Vaikunth Thukral, Jeffrey Tice, David E. Trilling, Max Turri, Richard Van Berg, Daniel Vanden Berk, Kurt Vetter, Francoise Virieux, Tomislav Vucina, William Wahl, Lucianne Walkowicz, Brian Walsh, Christopher W. Walter, Daniel L. Wang, Shin-Yawn Wang, Michael Warner, Oliver Wiecha, Beth Willman, Scott E. Winters, David Wittman, Sidney C. Wolff, W. Michael Wood-Vasey, Xiuqin Wu, Bo Xin, Peter Yoachim, and Hu Zhan. LSST: From Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products. \apj , 873(2):111, Mar 2019. arXiv:0805.2366, doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab042c.

[3]

Rubin Observatory Science Pipelines Developers. The LSST Science Pipelines Software: Optical Survey Pipeline Reduction and Analysis Environment. Project Science Technical Note PSTN-019, NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, July 2025. URL: https://pstn-019.lsst.io/, doi:10.71929/rubin/2570545.