The Faint Object Camera (FOC) was a

camera A camera is an instrument used to capture and store images and videos, either digitally via an electronic image sensor, or chemically via a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. As a pivotal technology in the fields of photograp ...

installed on the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ...

from launch in 1990 until 2002. It was replaced by the

Advanced Camera for Surveys The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) is a third-generation axial instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The initial design and scientific capabilities of ACS were defined by a team based at Johns Hopkins University. ACS was assembl ...

. In December 1993, Hubble's vision was corrected on STS-61 by installing COSTAR, which corrected the problem with Hubble's mirror before it reached an instrument like FOC. Later instruments had this correction built in, which is why it was possible to later remove COSTAR itself and replace it with a new science instrument. The camera was built by

Dornier GmbH Dornier Flugzeugwerke was a German aircraft manufacturer founded in Friedrichshafen in 1914 by Claude Dornier. Over the course of its long lifespan, the company produced many designs for both the civil and military markets. History Originally ...

and was funded by the

European Space Agency The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

. The unit actually consists of two complete and independent camera systems designed to provide extremely high resolution, exceeding 0.05

arcsecond A minute of arc, arcminute (abbreviated as arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of a degree. Since one degree is of a turn, or complete rotation, one arcminute is of a tu ...

s. It is designed to view very faint UV and optical light from 115 to 650 nanometers in wavelength., page 40. A 40 MB PDF file. FOC has been compared to a "telephoto" lens, providing a high resolution in a small field of view.FOC
. FOC could distinguish between two points 0.05

arc-second A minute of arc, arcminute (abbreviated as arcmin), arc minute, or minute arc, denoted by the symbol , is a unit of angular measurement equal to of a degree. Since one degree is of a turn, or complete rotation, one arcminute is of a tu ...

s apart. Rather than

CCD CCD may refer to: Science and technology * Charge-coupled device, an electronic light sensor used in various devices including digital cameras * .ccd, the filename extension for CloneCD's CD image file * Carbonate compensation depth, a property ...

s the FOC used

photon A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are massless particles that can ...

-counting

digicon A digicon detector is a spatially resolved light detector using the photoelectric effect directly. It uses magnetic and electric fields operating in a vacuum to focus the electrons released from a photocathode by incoming light onto a collection ...

s as its detector. The camera was designed to operate at low, medium, or high resolution. The angular resolution and field of view at each resolution were as follows:

Imaging examples

Space work

References

External links

First FOC image

Images of Nova Cygni 1992 With Hubble's Old and New Optics

Hubble Space Telescope instruments Space imagers Space hardware returned to Earth intact European Space Agency {{observatory-stub