The
Berkeley Lab CCD
The search for distant supernovae has resulted in fundamental advances in electronics. Some have found a place in medicine and may even find a place in the home.
Electronic CCDs (charge-coupled devices) have already replaced photographic film in the world's professional telescopes. Extremely fragile and expensive, existing astronomical CCDs are much less sensitive to red light than to blue light. Since the most distant objects in the universe are the reddest, Berkeley Lab scientists have bent their efforts to devising a revolutionary new kind of CCD to search for far-off supernovae.
Experience gained designing detectors for high-energy physics helped the researchers create a cheap, rugged CCD far more sensitive than any astronomical CCD now in use. Aspects of the new CCDs are also being used in medical imaging devices and may even inspire a new generation of still and video cameras for the home.
| SNAP,
a satellite to unveil the dark energy
Our understanding of the accelerating universe is based on only a few score type Ia supernovae, and fundamental questions remain unanswered. A consortium led by scientists at Berkeley Lab and the University of California at Berkeley is seeking support from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and NASA to launch a satellite called the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe -- SNAP. SNAP will have a telescope almost as big as the Hubble Space Telescope's, with a view of the sky hundreds of times larger. SNAP will be equipped with the "GigaCAM" -- a billion-pixel array of Berkeley Lab's new CCD chips placed side by side to form a sensitive astronomical camera with the largest view ever. By continually monitoring 20 square degrees of the darkest part of the sky -- an area equal to that of about a hundred full moons -- SNAP is expected to find and study in exquisite detail about 2,000 type Ia supernovae each year, including some that are more distant than any yet discovered. SNAP will study many other astronomical phenomena, but its main purpose is to unveil the dark energy that accelerates the universe. |
