Sony and the University of Alabama are working on a gigapixel resolution camera for improved satellite surveillance. It can see 10-km-square from an altitude of 7.5 kilometres with a resolution better than 50 centimetres per pixel. As well as removing annoying artefacts created by tiling images in Google Earth and similar, it should allow CCTV surveillance of entire cities with one camera. It does it with an array of chips that record small parts of the image and place them at the focal plane of a large multiple-lens system. Wonder how long I have to wait to get that in DSLR form?

[tags]sony, digital, camera, satellite, surveillance, gigapixel[/tags]