Coming soon to your local camera store - the pocketable Acme 1 gigapixel camera with 50x optical zoom, yours for only $99. Well, not all of that is actually true, only the 1 gigapixel part. The European Space Agency is building a 1 gigapixel digital camera for its Gaia space telescope, due to launch in 2010. The camera is made up of over 200 9-megapixel CCDs (found via Digital Photography Blog).

“The size of each CCD presents some unique manufacturing challenges. Even in the purest silicon, defects can occur. Typically, with the CCDs that are used in our digital cameras on Earth, perhaps 20 or more are manufactured from the same silicon wafer and one or two rejects are tolerable.

However, the Gaia CCDs are so large that only two will fit onto each silicon wafer. So the chance of a defect occurring in a Gaia CCD is considerable.”

Thanks to Ricky Nichols for letting me know about the story.

Website: Universe Today - How About a Gigapixel Digital Camera?