•WFPC is pronounced “wif pic ”!

•WFPC 2 was installed during Hubble’s 1st 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

The Workhorse of the Hubble Space Telescope for

15 years!

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.

WFPC 2 was able to see wavelengths from UV to near IR.

Each camera is a CCD detector with 800x800 pixels.

48 Filters were available to study a wide range of wavelengths.

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.

WFPC-2

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.

• The radiator attached to WFPC2 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 WFPC2 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.

Size of Earth’s Atmosphere

~350 miles above surface

Size of Hubble’s Orbit

~60 miles above surface

Hubble orbitsEarth every 90 minutes

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.

“WFPC 2’s Greatest Hits”

The Images that Changed our

View of the Universe…

These images of M100 show the dramatic improvement in capability after the 1st 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!

The Hubble Deep Field

That small speck of sky contains over 1000 galaxies, each with hundreds of thousands of stars!

Our world got a lot smaller…

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…

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.

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!

Before Hubble, astronomers suspected, but had no proof, that supermassive black holes lurk deep in the bellies of galaxies.

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.

WFPC2 image of a spiral-shaped disk of hot gas in the core of active galaxy M87. HST measurements show the disk is rotating so rapidly it contains a massive black hole at its hub.

Our universe began in a colossal expansion known as the Big Bang, and has been stretching apart ever since. Using WFPC2 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.

A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds is captured in this stunning image of the super-massive star Eta Carinae.

Eta Carinae is expected to go supernova in the (relatively) near future.

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.

WFPC2 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.

Mercury is too close to the Sun to be observed by Hubble

Jupiter

Uranus Neptune

Saturn

In tribute to Hubble's longest running optical camera, a planetary nebula, Kohoutek 4-55, has been imaged as WFPC2's final "pretty picture".

In May of 2009, WFPC 2 was removed from the Hubble Space Telescope, and replaced with the WFPC3.

WFPC 2’s new permanent home is the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum