However, in contrast to home cameras that are used to report photographs of issues which might be very bright, astronomical CCDs have to be souped up so as to detect the tiny amount of sunshine that reaches us from faint and/or distant objects. Much of the sunshine from extremely distant galaxies and supernovae has been redshifted into long-wavelength red and infrared gentle, which standard CCDs do not detect very nicely. The “Official First Light” ceremony was held on September 12, 2012. Within forty five minutes of its first exposure, DECam was already delivering promising, high quality photographs.
We also encountered …
