Billion Pixel Camera!

You read that correctly. A billion pixels and it's not some trick multi camera stunt but the worlds biggest digital camera.

From the article:

• Gaia's gigantic sensor is comprised of 106 separate CCD detectors, mosaiced together to form a monster camera over three feet wide. The resulting imaging system is so powerful that it will be able to precisely measure the width of a hair from over 600 miles away, and from here on Earth, it could spot a dime on the moon.

Oh, did I forget to mention that? Sorry..... Gaia is a spacecraft built by the ESA due to be launced in 2013. The spacecraft will spend five years creating a three dimensional map of our entire galaxy. It is hoped that Gaia will detect 15,000 new alien planets. It will also focus it's high resolution eye towards quasars, brown dwarfs and 10 stars with planets orbiting them plus it's hoped that the system will catch 1 of 10 stars that explode in other galaxies each day.

Here is the ESA's Gaia site