How Digital Camera Works

Digital cameras are everywhere nowadays. In phones, in tablets and in computers.

But how do they actually work?

Well, light goes into the lens and lands on a small sensor.  The sensor is divided into millions of tiny squares – or pixels as they’re called.

Each little square is a bit like a solar panel.  You know that a solar panel takes light and makes it into electricity?  Well the same thing is going on in your camera.  As the image hits the sensor, each square gets a different electrical charge depending on the brightness and colour of the light hitting it.

The computer in the camera takes the grid of electrical charges and converts them into a picture.  It’s recorded as a computer file so it can be accessed as many times as you like and moved around.

Different cameras have different amounts of squares.  ‘Mega’ means million, so a two megapixel camera has two million pixels – or squares, on its sensor.

Space Facts

Read some fun space facts and find out more about astronomy, the Moon, planets, our Sun, the Milky Way galaxy, our Universe and much more.            

The Sun is over 300000 times larger than earth.

Halley’s Comet was last seen in the inner Solar System in 1986, it will be visible again from Earth sometime in 2061 (get your camera ready).

Venus is the hottest planet in our solar system with a surface temperature of over 450 degrees Celsius.

Many scientists believe that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago.

The Solar System formed around 4.6 billion years ago.

The Moon appears to have more craters and scars than Earth because it has a lot less natural activity going on, the Earth is constantly reforming its surface through earthquakes, erosion, rain, wind and plants growing on the surface, while the moon has very little weather to alter its appearance.

Saturn isn't the only ringed planet, other gas giants such as Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune also have rings, and they are just less obvious.

Footprints and tire tracks left behind by astronauts on the moon will stay there forever as there is no wind to blow them away.

In 2006, astronomers changed the definition of a planet. This means that Pluto is now referred to as a dwarf planet. Learn more dwarf planet facts.

Because of lower gravity, a person who weighs 200 pounds on earth would only weigh 76 pounds on the surface of Mars.

The only planet that rotates on its side like a barrel is Uranus. The only planet that spins backwards relative to the others is Venus.

Some of the fastest meteoroids can travel through the solar system at a speed of around 42 kilometers per second (26 miles per second). Check out more meteoroid facts or learn the difference between comets, asteroids and meteoroids.

The first man-made object sent into space was in 1957 when the Russian satellite named Sputnik was launched.

Jupiter's 4 biggest moons are named Europa, Ganymede, Callisto and Io.