Over the next two months, astronomers on the mountain will be testing the Dark Energy Camera and tuning the system that comprises the telescope plus the camera.

ENGADGET: DECam: Gazing deep into the final frontier in search of dark energy

Don't expect to see one of these in a commercial DSLR anytime soon (especially now that Mamiya has left the game), but a division of DALSA Semiconductor has successfully manufactured and delivered a 111 megapixel image sensor that's only been topped on these pages by the 500 megapixel monster inside Fermilab's Dark Energy Camera.

ENGADGET: DALSA ships 111 megapixel CCD

When it's bolted onto the Blanco Telescope at the Cerro Tolodo Observatory in Chile next month the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera will survey some 300 million galaxies in the southern sky, measuring the speed at which they are moving apart with phenomenal accuracy, and giving the best description yet of the accelerating expansion of the Universe.

BBC: Getting the measure of dark energy