Scientists in the United States claim to have built the world’s largest digital camera.

The camera, which the team worked on for several years in a laboratory in the U.S. state of California, is about the size of a small car and weighs three tonnes, the National Accelerator Laboratory in Palo Alto said.

The device’s largest lens has a diameter of almost 1.6 metres.

In total, the camera has 189 sensors and 3.2 gigapixels.

The researchers say it could capture an image of a golf ball from a distance of 24km.

The equipment, which costs around $168 million, will be installed in an observatory in the Chilean Andes. There, it will spend a decade imaging the southern sky and collecting data.

“We will soon start producing the greatest movie of all time and the most informative map of the night sky ever assembled,” said the observatory’s director, Željko Ivezić. 

(dpa/NAN)