The image to the left shows a 6 degree diameter region of the Orion constellation, plus an image of the full moon to the same scale.

Click on the links below to compare the fields of view of various astronomical instruments.

Hubble Space Telescope (0.05°)
The HST views only a very small patch of sky at a time.

Subaru (0.5°)
The SuprimeCam wide-field camera on the 8-meter Subaru telescope has a field of view about the same diameter as the Moon.

Pan-STARRS (3°)
Pan-STARRs will have the widest field of view of any digital sky survey to date.

Palomar Sky Survey (6°)
This photographic survey from the 1950s used a 1.2-meter diameter Schmidt telescope to survey the whole northern sky. Pan-STARRS wil be about 400 times more sentisive than the Palomar Sky Survey.

Orion image courtesy of Wei-Hao Wang