A Closer Look at Ralph

Ralph consists of three panchromatic (black-and-white) and four color imagers inside its Multispectral Visible Imaging Component (MVIC), as well as an infrared compositional mapping spectrometer called the Linear Etalon Imaging Spectral Array (LEISA). Ralph's suite of seven detectors - all charge-coupled devices (CCDs), as you'd find in a digital camera - are fed by a single, sensitive magnifying telescope with a resolution more than 10 times better than the eye can see. The entire package weighs 11 kilograms (about 24 pounds) and draws just over 6 watts of power.