European Space Agency creates one billion pixel camera

This isn't the Ultraman GAIA that we come to know and love, but it does have to do with our planets at least. Back at the turn of the millennium, the European Space Agency devised an ambitious mission to map one billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy — in 3D. To do this, it enlisted UK-based e2v Technologies and built an immense digital camera comprised of 106 snugly-fit charge coupled devices — the largest ever for a space program. These credit card-shaped, human hair-thick slabs of silicon carbide act like tiny galactic eyes, each storing incoming light as a single pixel.

2DayBlog.com, European Space Agency creates one billion pixel camera