Astrophysics (Index)About

field of view

(FOV, field of vision, field)
(angular measure of how much an optical instrument can view)

The field of view (field of vision, or just field, or FOV) of an astronomical observation is the region of the celestial sphere being observed at an instant. The term is also used for telescopes (its field of view), meaning the shape of such observations through it (sized to match the FOV of an actual observation). The actual FOV generally depends upon the instrument in use and that of a particular instrument is often a square within the telescope's circular FOV and may be much smaller; for example, JWST's instruments' FOVs are each on a different small part of the theoretical FOV provided by JWST's mirrors. The term field of view is also used for a quantification of such regions (often what is meant by a particular telescope's FOV) consisting of the region's angular area, aka solid angle, often given in square degrees or square arcminutes, but sometimes in degrees or arcminutes, which can mean a side, a radius, or some such dimension giving a notion of the size. Example telescope FOVs:

The term field of view is also occasionally used to refer to the range of surveys, similarly indicating the portion of the sky it covers. The term wide field is commonly used to indicate a relatively large FOV ("relatively large" given the particular instrument type and/or purpose).


(telescopes,optics,measure,specification)
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field_of_view
https://dictionary.obspm.fr/index.php?formSearchTextfield=field+of+view&showAll=1
https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/10Page34.pdf
https://telescopicwatch.com/field-of-view-astronomy-calculate/
https://www.rp-photonics.com/field_of_view.html
https://home.ifa.hawaii.edu/users/mickey/ASTR110L_S05/Pleiades.html

Referenced by pages:
1 Jansky Empty Field Survey (1 Jy)
2dF-SDSS LRG and QSO survey (2SLAQ)
4MOST
adaptive optics (AO)
Allen Telescope Array (ATA)
ALMACAL
Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT)
ASCA
asterism
ATHENA
AtLAST
BASS
BeppoSAX
BigBOSS
BlackGEM
Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT)
CCAT
coronagraph
DAOPHOT
Dragonfly Telephoto Array
drift scan
dropout
Einstein Probe (EP)
ESO Schmidt Telescope
etendue (AΩ)
Euclid
European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT)
European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope (ESO VLT)
Evryscope
extended source
eXTP
fast radio burst (FRB)
FAUST
field
field curvature
field star
filter designator
focal length
Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST)
Fsky (fsky)
Gattini-IR
Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)
GPX
Groth Strip
guide star (GS)
Hale Telescope
HARMONI
HATNet
HERA
High Energy Transient Explorer (HETE)
Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET)
Hubble Space Telescope (HST)
imaging spectrometer
integral field spectrograph
integral field unit (IFU)
intensity mapping (IM)
International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT)
Isaac Newton Telescope (INT)
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
KELT
Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)
Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT)
Large Submillimeter Telescope (LST)
Livermore Optical Transient Imaging System (LOTIS)
Liverpool Telescope (LT)
Magellan Telescopes
MAXI
meridian circle
Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC)
MMT
Multi-object Optical and Near-IR Spectrograph (MOONS)
MUSTANG
NEO Surveyor
NIRCam
NIRSpec
occulting bar
Palomar 48 Inch Telescope (P48)
Palomar high-redshift quasar surveys
Palomar Transient Factory (PTF)
Pan-STARRS
Parker Solar Probe (PSP)
photometry
Pi of the Sky
plate
PLATO
POEMMA
Pre-OmegaTranS (POTS)
PUNCH
rare designator prefixes
Roman Space Telescope (RST)
ROSAT
Rubin Observatory (VRO)
Satech-01
SCAP
Schmidt camera
Schwarzschild telescope
shift-and-add
SkyMapper
slitless spectrograph
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)
solid angle (Ω)
spaxel
SPHEREx
STAR-X
STARE
STELLA
StrayCats
STROBE-X
Subaru PFS
Subaru Telescope
SuperBIT
survey field
Telescope Array Project (TA)
telluric line
Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT)
Tomographic Ionized-carbon Mapping Experiment (TIME)
transit
transit telescope
UK Schmidt Telescope (UKST)
ULTRASAT
United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT)
USNO Twin Astrograph
VLT Survey Telescope (VST)
WEAVE
Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT)
WFC3
Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE)
Wide-field Multi-object Spectrograph (WFMOS)
William Herschel Telescope (WHT)
WINGS
Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF)

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