Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2

Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2)

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Fast Facts The Workhorse of the Hubble Space Telescope for 15 years! • WFPC is pronounced “wif pic ”! • WFPC 2 was installed during Hubble’s 1 st Servicing Mission, in December of 1993 • WFPC 2 replaced the original WFPC, and contained corrective optics to compensate for the spherical aberration caused by the flawed main mirror • WFPC 2 remained in orbit for 15 years, until replaced by WFPC 3 in May of 2009

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) About the Camera WFPC 2 consists of 4 individual cameras… 3 Wide Field Cameras, and 1 high resolution Planetary Camera. They could be used individually, or together, creating this “stairstep” pattern. Each camera is a CCD detector with 800 x 800 pixels. 48 Filters were available to study a wide range of wavelengths. WFPC 2 was able to see wavelengths from UV to near IR.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Light Path into the Hubble Optical Telescope Assemby (OTA). Light Path within WFPC 2. The light beam from the OTA travels through the chosen filter, then to the Fold Mirror, Primary Mirror, and Secondary Mirror. Then to the CCD Detector.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Location of WFPC-2 withing Hubble WFPC-2

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Placement of Instruments FGS = Fine Guidance Sensor (used for pointing) The placement of the instruments after each servicing mission. The WFPC cameras are “radial” and are directly in the path of the main optics. The other instruments are “axial”, and sit to the side of the optical path. Each instrument accesses a different part of the incoming light beam.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Micrometeorite Damage to Radiator • The radiator attached to WFPC 2 has dimensions of 2. 2 m by 0. 8 m. • Its outermost layer is a 4 -mm-thick aluminum, curved plate coated with white thermal paint. • This radiator has been exposed to space since the deployment of WFPC 2 in 1993. • Due to its large surface area and long exposure time, the radiator serves as a unique witness plate for the micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) environment between 560 and 620 km altitude.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Size of Hubble’s Orbit ~350 miles above surface Size of Earth’s Atmosphere ~60 miles above surface Hubble orbits Earth every 90 minutes

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) From Raw Data to Pretty Picture Raw data from the WFPC contains cosmic rays and the instrument’s electronic “noise”. Data Processing removes the flaws and combines exposures to create a clean image. Red, Green, and Blue filtered images can be combined to create a final color image.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) “WFPC 2’s Greatest Hits” The Images that Changed our View of the Universe…

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Improved Eyesight These images of M 100 show the dramatic improvement in capability after the 1 st Servicing Mission. The WFPC-1 image on the left shows the effect of the spherical aberration in the mirror. The optics in WFPC-2 compensated for the flaw, giving us unprecedented clarity!

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) The Hubble Deep Field What happens when you stare at a relatively blank piece of sky for 10 days straight? Hubble Astronomers asked this question in 1995, as here’s what we found out… That small speck of sky contains over 1000 galaxies, each with hundreds of thousands of stars! Our world got a lot smaller…

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Pillars of Creation Eagle Nebula A Close-up of part of this nebula revealed a “stellar nursery”. Each point of light jutting out from these gas pillars is a star in the process of formation.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Comet Crashes into Jupiter! In 1994, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was discovered to be on a collision course with Jupiter. It broke into several small pieces and slammed into Jupiter over the course of several days. It was a rare opportunity to watch a planetary impact event!

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Confirmation of Black Holes Before Hubble, astronomers suspected, but had no proof, that supermassive black holes lurk deep in the bellies of galaxies. WFPC 2 image of a spiral-shaped disk of hot gas in the core of active galaxy M 87. HST measurements show the disk is rotating so rapidly it contains a massive black hole at its hub. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, together with spectroscopy data from Hubble, showed that most galaxies in the universe do indeed harbor monstrous black holes up to billions of times the mass of our sun.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Age of the Universe Our universe began in a colossal expansion known as the Big Bang, and has been stretching apart ever since. Using WFPC 2 to observe stars that vary periodically in brightness, astronomers were able to calculate the pace of this expansion to an unprecedented degree of error of 10 percent. The camera also played a leading role in discovering that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, driven by a mysterious force called “dark energy. ” Together, these findings led to the calculation that our universe is approximately 13. 7 billion years old.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) A Doomed Star A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds is captured in this stunning image of the super-massive star Eta Carinae is expected to go supernova in the (relatively) near future.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Interacting Galaxies The left-most galaxy, or the "one" in this image, is relatively undisturbed apart from a smooth ring of starlight. It appears nearly on edge to our line of sight. The right-most galaxy, resembling a zero, exhibits a clumpy, blue ring of intense star formation. These galaxies appear to make a perfect “ 10” – showing that Hubble was in prime form after being off-line.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Interacting Galaxies, continued… WFPC 2 caught a cosmic dance between two spiral galaxies. Strong gravitational forces from NGC 2207 have distorted the shape of its smaller dance partner, flinging out stars and gas into long streamers that extend 100, 000 light-years toward the right-hand edge of the picture. Eventually this dance will end. Billions of years from now the two galaxies will become one.

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) The Inner Planets Mercury is too close to the Sun to be observed by Hubble

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) The Outer Planets Saturn Jupiter Uranus Neptune

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) WFPC 2’s Final Image In tribute to Hubble's longest running optical camera, a planetary nebula, Kohoutek 4 -55, has been imaged as WFPC 2's final "pretty picture".

Wide Field / Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC-2) Farewell to WFPC 2 In May of 2009, WFPC 2 was removed from the Hubble Space Telescope, and replaced with the WFPC 3. WFPC 2’s new permanent home is the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum