SALSA
Starfront Amateur Large Sky Array
SALSA compares the combined optical aperture of every telescope registered on Starfront Atlas against the largest observation telescopes ever built — historical and current, ground-based and space-based.
Each telescope is a circle sized to its aperture; multi-mirror instruments show their equivalent aperture in collecting area (√ of the sum of squared apertures) — the same formula used to compute SALSA's combined aperture.
SALSA - Starfront Amateur Large Sky Array
Professional telescopes
1.2m
Euclid
🛰️
in orbit (L2)
1.4m
Starfront Amateur Large Sky Array
Rockwood, Texas, USA
128 telescopes
2.4m
Hubble Space Telescope
🛰️
in orbit
2.4m
Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
🛰️
launching Aug 30, 2026
2.54m
Hooker
Mount Wilson, California, United States
3.6m
ESO 3.6m Telescope
La Silla, Chile
hosts the HARPS spectrograph
4m
LAMOST
Xinglong, China
5.1m
Hale
Palomar, California, United States
6m
BTA-6
Nizhny Arkhyz, Russia
6.5m
Multi-Mirror Telescope (MMT)
Amado, Arizona, United States
6.5m
James Webb Space Telescope
🛰️
in orbit (L2)
8.1m
Gemini North
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States
8.1m
Gemini South
Cerro Pachón, Chile
8.2m
Subaru Telescope
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States
8.4m
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope / Rubin
Cerro Pachón, Chile
9.19m
Magellan Telescopes
Las Campanas, Chile
2 × 6.5m
10m
Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET)
Fort Davis, Texas, United States
10m
Keck Telescope
Mauna Kea, Hawaii, United States
10.4m
Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC)
La Palma, Spain
11.1m
Southern African Large Telescope (SALT)
Sutherland, South Africa
11.88m
Large Binocular Telescope (LBT)
Mount Graham, Arizona, United States
2 × 8.4m
16.4m
Very Large Telescope (VLT)
Cerro Paranal, Chile
4 × 8.2m