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What is the difference between a camera and a telescope? Is it just how it looks, or there is some deeper difference?

• DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  This camera is going to be mounted onto a telescope. You can think of the telescope (specifically, the three large mirrors that guide the light to the camera) as the lens of your DSLR, and this thing as the CCD behind the lens. The one complication is that this camera itself has a few lenses, which are the final elements in the optical system. There's more information about the optical system for Vera Rubin / LSST here: https://www.lsst.org/about/tel-site/optical_design https://www.lsst.org/about/tel-site/optical_design
• sega_sai 4y ago
  The telescope collects light over large area. The camera records the image.
• Retric 4y ago
  A telescope is a light collection device so you might be able to use your eye or a camera at the end of an optical telescope, but not a radio telescope. On earth the sky’s motion blur is predictable and the atmospheric distortions detectable so you want to adjust for both on long exposure shots on earth.
• nullc 4y ago
  Generally the 'camera' of a telescope is just the sensor part while the 'telescope' is the lens part. In the case of LSST the camera module also contains some corrective lenses, which serve the purpose of making the focal plane flat and correcting chromatic aberration created by the filter substrate and the vacuum window (the sensor part itself is cryogenically cooled so it has to be in a vacuum).