The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) is 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 ...

's last and most technologically advanced instrument to take images in the visible spectrum. It was installed as a replacement for the

Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) is a camera formerly installed on the Hubble Space Telescope. The camera was built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and is roughly the size of a baby grand piano. It was installed by servicing mission ...

during the first spacewalk of Space Shuttle mission

STS-125 STS-125, or HST-SM4 (Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4), was the fifth and final Space Shuttle mission to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST). The launch of the Space Shuttle ''Atlantis'' occurred on May 11, 2009, at 2:01 pm EDT. Land ...

(Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4) on May 14, 2009. , WFC3 was still operating.

Specifications

Hubble Sees a Horsehead of a Different Color

The instrument is designed to be a versatile

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 ...

capable of imaging astronomical targets over a very wide wavelength range and with a large field of view. It is a fourth-generation instrument for Hubble. The instrument has two independent light paths: a UV and optical channel that uses a pair of

charge-coupled device A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a ...

s (CCD) to record images from 200 to 1000 nm; and a near infrared detector array that covers the wavelength range from 800 to 1700 nm. The UV/optical channel has two CCDs, each 2048×4096

pixel In digital imaging, a pixel (abbreviated px), pel, or picture element is the smallest addressable element in a Raster graphics, raster image, or the smallest addressable element in a dot matrix display device. In most digital display devices, p ...

s, while the IR detector is 1024×1024. The focal planes of both channels were designed specifically for this camera. The optical channel has a field of view of 164 by 164 arcsec (2.7 by 2.7 arcminute, about 8.5% of the diameter of the full moon as seen from Earth) with 0.04 arcsec pixels. This view is comparable to the

and is slightly smaller than that of 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 ...

. The near infrared channel has a field of view of 135 by 127 arcsec (2.3 by 2.1 arcminutes) with 0.13 arcsec pixels, and has a much larger field of view than

Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) is a Measuring instrument, scientific instrument for infrared astronomy, installed on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), operating from 1997 to 1999, and from 2002 to 2008. Images produ ...

, which it was designed to largely replace. The near infrared channel is a pathfinder for the future

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, Lis ...

. Both channels have a variety of broad and narrow-band filters, as well as prisms and

grism A grism (also called a grating prism) is a combination of a prism and grating arranged so that light at a chosen central wavelength passes straight through. The advantage of this arrangement is that one and the same camera can be used both for i ...

s, which enable wide-field, very-low-resolution spectroscopy that is useful for surveys. The optical channel covers the visible spectrum (380 nm to 780 nm) with high efficiency, and is also able to see into the near ultraviolet (down to 200 nm). The IR channel is designed to lack sensitivity beyond 1700 nm (as compared with the 2500 nm limit for NICMOS) to avoid being swamped by thermal background coming from the relatively warm HST structure. This allows WFC3 to be cooled using a thermoelectric cooler instead of carrying a consumable cryogen to cool the instrument. The camera makes use of returned space hardware as the structure is built from the original

Wide Field and Planetary Camera The Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WFPC) (pronounced as wiffpick (Operators of the WFPC1 were known as "whiff-pickers")) was a camera installed on the Hubble Space Telescope launched in April 1990 and operated until December 1993. It was one of ...

as well as the filter assembly. These were switched for the

by the servicing mission

STS-61 STS-61 was NASA's first Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, and the fifth flight of the Space Shuttle Endeavour, Space Shuttle ''Endeavour''. The mission launched on December 2, 1993, from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. The missi ...

in December 1993. WFC3 was originally conceived as an optical channel only; the near infrared channel was added later. WFC3 is intended to ensure that Hubble retains a powerful imaging capability through to the end of its lifetime.

History

WFC3 had been in the planning since the Spring of 1998. It was built by a team of highly experienced Hubble engineers and scientists drawn from many organizations, with leadership at

Goddard Space Flight Center The Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) is a major NASA space research laboratory located approximately northeast of Washington, D.C., in Greenbelt, Maryland, United States. Established on May 1, 1959, as NASA's first space flight center, GSFC ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It borders the states of Virginia to its south, West Virginia to its west, Pennsylvania to its north, and Delaware to its east ...

. WFC3 was constructed mostly at Goddard Space Flight Center and Ball Aerospace in Colorado. Various parts were built by contractors across the United States and the United Kingdom. The instrument was scheduled by

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

to launch with

on 14 October 2008, but the mission was postponed due to additional repairs that were required. The mission launched on 11 May 2009 and the WFC3 was installed on 14 May. by astronauts John M. Grunsfeld and Andrew J. Feustel.

WFC3 Pillars of Creation

In celebration of the 25th anniversary since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers assembled a larger and higher-resolution photograph of the

Pillars of Creation ''Pillars of Creation'' is a photograph taken by the Hubble Space Telescope that depicts elephant trunks of interstellar gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula of the Serpens constellation, some from Earth. These elephant trunks had been disco ...

, which was unveiled in January 2015 at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle. The image was photographed by the Hubble Telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, installed in 2009, and produced using near-infrared and visible light exposure. The 1995 version of this picture of part of the Eagle nebula was taken with WFPC2.

2015 onwards

On January 8, 2019, the instrument experienced a suspected hardware problem and the onboard computer suspended operations with the WFC3 while other instruments continued operation. NASA later stated that the issue was software related and brought the instrument to normal status on January 17, 2019.

Gallery

File:HH 901 and HH 902 in the Carina nebula (captured by the Hubble Space Telescope).jpg, WFC3 view of Mystic Mountain in the

Carina Nebula The Carina Nebula or Eta Carinae Nebula (catalogued as NGC 3372; also known as the Great Carina Nebula) is a large, complex area of bright and dark nebulosity in the constellation Carina, located in the Carina–Sagittarius Arm of the Milky W ...

File:Pillars of creation 2014 HST WFC3-UVIS full-res denoised.jpg, A higher-resolution HST image of the Pillars of Creation in the

Eagle Nebula The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611, and also known as the Star Queen Nebula) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745–46. Both the "Eagle" a ...

, taken in 2014 as a tribute to the original photograph File:Jupiter on 2010-06-07 (captured by the Hubble Space Telescope).jpg, Jupiter in 2010, by WFC3

References

External links

* Th
WFC3 Web site
at th
Space Telescope Science Institute
which includes a description of the instrument and a link that compares the capabilities of various Hubble instruments.

NASA.gov WF3
{{Hubble Space Telescope Hubble Space Telescope instruments Space imagers