A friend at Canon research sent me this today - BIG isn't it?
http://image-sensors-world.blogspot....talled-in.html
Canon announced that a large high-sensitivity CMOS sensor
developed by the company last year has enabled the 60fps video recording across a wide 3.3deg x 3.3deg field of view of meteors with an equivalent apparent magnitude of 10 (The brighter the celestial body appears, the lower the value of its apparent magnitude. The darkest star visible to the naked eye has an apparent magnitude of approximately 6). The sensor's chip size measuring 202 x 205 mm is said to be the world's largest surface area for a CMOS sensor and among the largest that can be produced from 300-mm wafer. The device is approximately 40 times the size of Canon's 35mm commercial CMOS sensor and makes possible video recording in dark conditions with as little as 0.3 lux of illumination.
In January this year, the CMOS sensor was installed on the focal plane of 105 cm Schmidt telescope at the University of Tokyo's Kiso Observatory, Institute of Astronomy, School of Science (Kiso-gun, Nagano prefecture).
Comparing the 8" CMOS to a normal 35mm full frame CMOS!