camera is a tiled mosaic of 32 CCD chips, each with 2k x 4k pixels, arranged in a 4 x 8 array.

The six filters used to take observations are set in a photometric system partly similar to that of the Sloan survey, to aid in comparison of the two sets of observations. These similar filters are the visible and near-infrared passbands named g, r, i and z. SkyMapper has additional, distinctive ultraviolet filters, a Strömgren system-like