Narrow Search
 
 
Advanced Search

Browse All : Wide Field Planetary Camera 2

Printer Friendly
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1-50 of 311
     
     
Galaxy Triplet ARP 274
On April 1-2, the Hubble Spa …
4/6/09
Description On April 1-2, the Hubble Space Telescope photographed the winning target in the Space Telescope Science Institute's 'You Decide' competition in celebration of the International Year of Astronomy (IYA). The winner is a group of galaxies called Arp 274. The striking object received 67,021 votes out of the nearly 140,000 votes cast for the six candidate targets. Arp 274, also known as NGC 5679, is a system of three galaxies that appear to be partially overlapping in the image, although they may be at somewhat different distances. The spiral shapes of two of these galaxies appear mostly intact. The third galaxy (to the far left) is more compact, but shows evidence of star formation. Two of the three galaxies are forming new stars at a high rate. This is evident in the bright blue knots of star formation that are strung along the arms of the galaxy on the right and along the small galaxy on the left. The largest component is located in the middle of the three. It appears as a spiral galaxy, which may be barred. The entire system resides at about 400 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo. Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 was used to image Arp 274. Blue, visible and infrared filters were combined with a filter that isolates hydrogen emission. The colors in this image reflect the intrinsic color of the different stellar populations that make up the galaxies. Yellowish older stars can be seen in the central bulge of each galaxy. A bright central cluster of stars pinpoint each nucleus. Younger blue stars trace the spiral arms, along with pinkish nebulae that are illuminated by new star formation. Interstellar dust is silhouetted against the starry population. A pair of foreground stars inside our own Milky Way are at far right. The International Year of Astronomy is the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first observations with a telescope. People around the world came together to participate in the IYA's 100 Hours of Astronomy, April 2 to 5. This global astronomy event was geared toward encouraging as many people as possible to experience the night sky. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Date 4/6/09
Pretty as a Picture
The Hubble community bids fa …
5/11/09
Description The Hubble community bids farewell to the soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. In tribute...
Date 5/11/09
Pretty as a Picture
The Hubble community bids fa …
5/11/09
Description The Hubble community bids farewell to the soon-to-be decommissioned Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope. In tribute to Hubble's longest-running optical camera, a planetary nebula has been imaged as WFPC2's final "pretty picture." This planetary nebula is known as Kohoutek 4-55 (or K 4-55). It is one of a series of planetary nebulae that were named after their discoverer, Czech astronomer Lubos Kohoutek. A planetary nebula contains the outer layers of a red giant star that were expelled into interstellar space when the star was in the late stages of its life. Ultraviolet radiation emitted from the remaining hot core of the star ionizes the ejected gas shells, causing them to glow. In the case of K 4-55, a bright inner ring is surrounded by a bipolar structure. The entire system is then surrounded by a faint red halo, seen in the emission by nitrogen gas. This multi-shell structure is fairly uncommon in planetary nebulae. This Hubble image was taken by WFPC2 on May 4, 2009. The colors represent the makeup of the various emission clouds in the nebula: red represents nitrogen, green represents hydrogen, and blue represents oxygen. K 4-55 is nearly 4,600 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. The WFPC2 instrument, which was installed in 1993 to replace the original Wide Field/Planetary Camera, will be removed to make room for Wide Field Camera 3 during the STS-125 mission. During the camera's amazing, nearly 16-year run, WFPC2 provided outstanding science and spectacular images of the cosmos. Some of its best-remembered images are of the Eagle Nebula pillars, Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9's impacts on Jupiter's atmosphere, and the 1995 Hubble Deep Field -- the longest and deepest Hubble optical image of its time. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) and R. Sahai and J. Trauger (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Date 5/11/09
Hubble Follows the Rotation …
title Hubble Follows the Rotation of the Asteroid Vesta
description This is a NASA Hubble Space Telescope series of 24 images showing the full 5.34-hour rotation of the 325-mile diameter (525 kilometer) asteroid Vesta. Hubble resolves features as small as 50 miles across, allowing astronomers to map Vesta's geologically diverse terrain. The surface is a complex record of Vesta's four billion-year history. Features include ancient lava flows, and a gigantic impact basin that is so deep, it exposes the asteroid's subsurface, or mantle. This sequence was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 between November 28 and December 1, 1994, when Vesta was at a distance of 156 million miles from Earth. When combined with ground-based data, astronomers will be able to make the first geochemical map of Vesta's surface. *Image Credit*: B. Zellner (Georgia Southern University) and NASA
Hubble Captures Full View of …
title Hubble Captures Full View of Uranus's Rings on Edge
date 08.14.2007
description NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captures a rare view of the entire ring system of the planet Uranus, tilted edge-on to Earth. The rings were photographed with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on August 14, 2007. The edge-on rings appear as spikes above and below the planet. The rings cannot be seen running fully across the face of the planet because the bright glare of the planet has been blocked out in the HST photo (a small amount of residual glare appears as a fan-shaped image artifact, along with an edge between the exposure for the inner and outer rings). A much shorter color exposure of the planet has been photo-composited to show its size and position relative to the ring plane. Earthbound astronomers only see the rings' edge every 42 years as the planet follows a leisurely 84-year orbit about the Sun. However, the last time the rings were tilted edge-on to Earth astronomers didn't even know they existed. The fainter outer rings appear in the 2003 Hubble Space Telescope images, but were not noticed there until they were seen in the 2005 images and the previous ones were analyzed more carefully. Uranus has a total of 13 dusty rings. Credit: NASA [ http://www.nasa.gov/ ], ESA [ http://www.spacetelescope.org/ ], and M. Showalter (SETI Institute)
Neptune's Stormy Disposition
title Neptune's Stormy Disposition
date 08.11.1998
description Using powerful ground-and space-based telescopes, scientists have obtained a moving look at some of the wildest, weirdest weather in the solar system. Combining simultaneous observations of Neptune made with the Hubble Space Telescope and NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, a team of scientists led by Lawrence A. Sromovsky of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has captured the most insightful images to date of a planet whose blustery weather -- monster storms and equatorial winds of 900 miles per hour -- bewilders scientists. The weather on Neptune, the eighth planet from the sun, is an enigma to begin with. The mechanism that drives its near-supersonic winds and giant storms has yet to be determined. On Earth, weather is driven by energy from the sun as it heats the atmosphere and oceans. On Neptune, the sun is 900 times dimmer and scientists have yet to understand how Neptune's weather-generating machinery can be so efficient. "It's an efficient weather machine compared to Earth," said Sromovsky. "It seems to run on almost no energy." In an effort to dissect the distant planet's atmosphere and monitor its bizarre weather, Sromovsky and his colleagues obtained a series of measurements and images over the span of three of Neptune's rotations. From those observations, Sromovsky said it is possible to measure Neptune's circulation and view a "strange menagerie of variable, discrete cloud features and zonal bands" of weather. Moreover, the new observations enabled Sromovsky's team to probe some of the deeper features of the atmosphere and to map Neptune's cloud tops. "We can show some clouds are higher than others, that altitudes vary," he said. Knowing something about the topography of Neptune's clouds, provides a direct way to measure Neptune's powerful winds. A looming mystery, he said, is the fate of huge dark spots, possibly giant storms. When the planetary probe Voyager visited Neptune in 1989, it detected the Great Dark Spot, a pulsating feature nearly the size of the Earth itself. Two years ago, Hubble observations showed the spot had disappeared, and that another, smaller spot had emerged. But instead of growing to a large-scale storm like the Great Dark Spot, the new spot appears to be trapped at a fixed latitude and may be declining in intensity, said Sromovsky, a senior scientist at UW-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center. "They behave like storms, and the Great Dark Spot was an exaggerated features we haven't seen on any other planet. They seem to come and go, and rather than an exciting development of these dark spots, they dissipate." Another strange aspect of the distant planet's weather are distinct bands of weather that run parallel to the Neptunian equator. The weather bands encircle the planet and, in some respects, may be similar to the equatorial region of the Earth where tropical heat provides abundant energy to make clouds. "We can see regions of latitude where Neptune, consistently generates bright clouds," said Sromovsky. The regions are both above and below the planet's equator, but he added that it was uncertain what their explanation is in terms of atmospheric circulation. Sromovsky said that compared to the look provided by the Voyager spacecraft, Neptune is a different place: "The character of Neptune is different from what it was at the time of Voyager. The planet seems stable, yet different." Sromovsky's Hubble observations were made with Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. The different instruments allowed observations to be made in a variety of wavelengths, each providing a different set of information about Neptune's clouds, their structures and how they circulate. *Image Credit*: NASA
Hubble Optical Image of Jupi …
Name Hubble Optical Image of Jupiter
Circinus Galaxy-Optical
Name Circinus Galaxy-Optical
Hubble Optical Image of NGC …
Name Hubble Optical Image of NGC 5315
Hubble Space Telescope Image …
Name Hubble Space Telescope Image of central region of M15
HST Optical Image of C153
Name HST Optical Image of C153
Magnificant Details in a Dus …
Title Magnificant Details in a Dusty Spiral Galaxy
Full Description In 1995, the majestic spiral galaxy NGC 4414 was imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the HST Key Project on the Extragalactic Distance Scale. An international team of astronomers, led by Dr. Wendy Freedman of the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, observed this galaxy on 13 different occasions over the course of two months. Images were obtained with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) through three different color filters. Based on their discovery and careful brightness measurements of variable stars in NGC 4414, the Key Project astronomers were able to make an accurate determination of the distance to the galaxy. The resulting distance to NGC 4414, 19.1 megaparsecs or about 60 million light-years, along with similarly determined distances to other nearby galaxies, contributes to astronomers' overall knowledge of the rate of expansion of the universe. In 1999, the Hubble Heritage Team revisited NGC 4414 and completed its portrait by observing the other half with the same filters as were used in 1995. The end result is a stunning full-color look at the entire dusty spiral galaxy. The new Hubble picture shows that the central regions of this galaxy, as is typical of most spirals, contain primarily older, yellow and red stars. The outer spiral arms are considerably bluer due to ongoing formation of young, blue stars, the brightest of which can be seen individually at the high resolution provided by the Hubble camera. The arms are also very rich in clouds of interstellar dust, seen as dark patches and streaks silhouetted against the starlight.
Date 06/03/1999
NASA Center Hubble Space Telescope Center
An Expanding Bubble in Space
Title An Expanding Bubble in Space
Full Description Astronomers, using the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on board NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in October and November 1997 and April 1999, imaged the Bubble Nebula (NGC 7635) with unprecedented clarity. For the first time, they are able to understand the geometry and dynamics of this very complicated system. Earlier pictures taken of the nebula with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 1 left many issues unanswered, as the data could not be fully calibrated for scientific use. In addition, those data never imaged the enigmatic inner structure presented here. The remarkably spherical "Bubble" marks the boundary between an intense wind of particles from the star and the more quiescent interior of the nebula. Research Team: Donald Walter (South Carolina State University), Paul Scowen, Jeff Hester, Brian Moore (Arizona State University), Reggie Dufour, Patrick Hartigan and Brent Buckalew (Rice University).
Date 01/13/2000
NASA Center Hubble Space Telescope Center
Light and Shadow in the Cari …
Title Light and Shadow in the Carina Nebula
Full Description Previously unseen details of a mysterious, complex structure within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) are revealed by this image of the "Keyhole Nebula," obtained with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The picture is a montage assembled from four different April 1999 telescope pointings with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which used six different color filters. The picture is dominated by a large, approximately circular feature, which is part of the Keyhole Nebula, named in the 19th century by Sir John Herschel. This region, about 8000 light-years from Earth, is located adjacent to the famous explosive variable star Eta Carinae, which lies just outside the field of view toward the upper right. The high resolution of the Hubble images reveals the relative three- dimensional locations of many of these features, as well as showing numerous small dark globules that may be in the process of collapsing to form new stars. Two striking large, sharp-edged dust clouds are located near the bottom center and upper left edges of the image. The former is immersed within the ring and the latter is just outside the ring. The pronounced pillars and knobs of the upper left cloud appear to point toward a luminous, massive star located just outside the field further toward the upper left, which may be responsible for illuminating and sculpting them by means of its high-energy radiation and stellar wind of high-velocity ejected material. These large dark clouds may eventually evaporate, or if there are sufficiently dense condensations within them, give birth to small star clusters. The Carina Nebula, with an overall diameter of more than 200 light- years, is one of the outstanding features of the Southern Hemisphere portion of the Milky Way. The diameter of the Keyhole ring structure shown here is about 7 light-years. These data were collected by the Hubble Heritage Team and Nolan R. Walborn (STScI), Rodolfo H. Barba' (La Plata Observatory, Argentina), and Adeline Caulet (France).
Date 02/03/2000
NASA Center Hubble Space Telescope Center
Hubble Observes the Moons an …
Title Hubble Observes the Moons and Rings of the Planet Uranus
Hubble Observes the Moons an …
Title Hubble Observes the Moons and Rings of the Planet Uranus
Hubble Confirms Existence of …
Title Hubble Confirms Existence of Massive Black Hole at Heart of Active Galaxy
Hubble Views Distant Galaxie …
Title Hubble Views Distant Galaxies through a Cosmic Lens
Hubble Peers Deep into the C …
Title Hubble Peers Deep into the Crowded Heart of the Densest Known Star Cluster
Hubble Observes the Fire and …
Title Hubble Observes the Fire and Fury of a Stellar Birth
Hubble Spies a Really Cool S …
Title Hubble Spies a Really Cool Star
Astronomers View Comet Impac …
Title Astronomers View Comet Impact with Jupiter
Hubble Observes A New Saturn …
Title Hubble Observes A New Saturn Storm
Hubble Monitors Weather on N …
Title Hubble Monitors Weather on Neighboring Planets
Galaxy NGC 4881 and the Coma …
Title Galaxy NGC 4881 and the Coma Cluster
Hubble Finds Thousands of Ga …
Title Hubble Finds Thousands of Gaseous Fragments Surrounding a Dying Star
Hubble Tracks Jupiter Storms
Title Hubble Tracks Jupiter Storms
Hubble Probes the Violent Bi …
Title Hubble Probes the Violent Birth of Stars in Galaxy NGC 253
Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Title Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Hubble Sees Early Building B …
Title Hubble Sees Early Building Blocks of Today's Galaxies
Hubble Identifies a Long-Sou …
Title Hubble Identifies a Long-Sought Population of Comets Beyond Neptune
Rare Hubble Portrait of Io a …
Title Rare Hubble Portrait of Io and Jupiter
Gamma-Ray Bursts Common To N …
Title Gamma-Ray Bursts Common To Normal Galaxies? Hubble Data Offer New Clues and Puzzles
Hubble Finds a Bare Black Ho …
Title Hubble Finds a Bare Black Hole Pouring Out Light
Hubble Again Views Saturn's …
Title Hubble Again Views Saturn's Rings Edge-On
Hubble Reveals Huge Crater o …
Title Hubble Reveals Huge Crater on the Surface of the Asteroid Vesta
Hubble Discovers New Class o …
Title Hubble Discovers New Class of Gravitational Lens for Probing the Structure of the Cosmos
Hubble Watches the Red Plane …
Title Hubble Watches the Red Planet as Mars Global Surveyor Begins Aerobraking
Hubble Sees a Neutron Star A …
Title Hubble Sees a Neutron Star Alone in Space
Hubble Views the Galileo Pro …
Title Hubble Views the Galileo Probe Entry Site on Jupiter
Hubble Space Telescope on Tr …
Title Hubble Space Telescope on Track for Measuring the Expansion Rate of the Universe
Comet Hyakutake
Title Comet Hyakutake
Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Title Doomed Star Eta Carinae
Fireworks Near a Black Hole …
Title Fireworks Near a Black Hole in the Core of Seyfert Galaxy NGC 4151
General Information What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. The Hubble telescope's imaging spectrograph simultaneously records, in unprecedented detail, the velocities of hundreds of gas knots streaming at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour from the nucleus of NGC 4151, thought to house a super-massive black hole. This is the first time the velocity structure in the heart of this object, or similar objects, has been mapped so vividly this close to its central black hole. The heart of NGC 4151 was captured in visible light in the upper left picture. In the other images, Hubble's imaging spectrograph has zeroed in on the galaxy's active central region. The Hubble data clearly show that the some material in the galaxy's hub is rapidly moving towards us, while other matter rapidly receding from us. This information is strong evidence for the existence of a black hole, an extremely compact, dense object that feeds on material swirling around it.
Hubble Reveals Stellar Firew …
Title Hubble Reveals Stellar Fireworks Accompanying Galaxy Collisions
General Information What is a Space Science Update? Major Hubble discoveries on NASA television ... Astronomers explain their Hubble discoveries at a press conference, called a Space Science Update (SSU), broadcast on NASA television. The SSU includes a question and answer session with members of the media. The Hubble telescope has uncovered over 1,000 bright, young star clusters bursting to life in a brief, intense, brilliant "fireworks show" at the heart of a pair of colliding galaxies. The picture on the left provides a sweeping view of the two galaxies, called the Antennae. The green shape pinpoints Hubble's view. Hubble's close-up view [right] provides a detailed look at the "fireworks" at the center of this wreck. The respective cores of the twin galaxies are the orange blobs, left and right of center, crisscrossed by filaments of dark dust. A wide band of chaotic dust stretches between the cores of the two galaxies. The sweeping spiral-like patterns, traced by bright blue star clusters, are the result of a firestorm of star birth that was triggered by the collision. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1997/34/text/ ]
Looking Down a Barrel of Gas …
Title Looking Down a Barrel of Gas at a Doomed Star
General Information What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. Astronomers using the Hubble telescope have obtained the sharpest view yet of a glowing loop of gas called the Ring Nebula (M57), first cataloged more than 200 years ago by French astronomer Charles Messier. The pictures reveal that the "Ring" is actually a cylinder of gas seen almost end-on. Such elongated shapes are common among other planetary nebulae, because thick disks of gas and dust form a waist around a dying star. This "waist" slows down the expansion of material ejected by the doomed object. The easiest escape route for this cast-off material is above and below the star. This photo reveals dark, elongated clumps of material embedded in the gas at the edge of the nebula, the dying central star is floating in a blue haze of hot gas. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1999/01/text/ ]
Astronomers Have Found a New …
Title Astronomers Have Found a New Twist in a Suspected Proto-Planetary Disk
General Information What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. A telltale new warp uncovered in a vast, thin disk of dust encircling the star Beta Pictoris may be caused by the gravitational tug of a bypassing star or companion brown dwarf. These conclusions are based on Hubble telescope pictures that reveal the dim outermost reaches of the disk, which are 7 billion miles from the central star. The top image presents the entire disk, which spans 140 billion miles edge-to-edge. An unusual flaring at the top of the right side of the disk reveals that dust has been pulled above the dense plane of the disk beyond what is observed on the left side. A detailed close-up view of the inner region of the disk [bottom picture] shows a warp in the disk. These new details support the presence of one or more planets orbiting the star. Read more: * Release Text [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/1998/03/text/ ]
Very Long Baseline Array Rev …
Title Very Long Baseline Array Reveals Formation Region of Giant Cosmic Jet Near a Black Hole
Hubble Telescope Reveals Swa …
Title Hubble Telescope Reveals Swarm of Glittering Stars in Nearby Galaxy
General Information What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. Back to top [ #top ]
Light and Shadow in the Cari …
Title Light and Shadow in the Carina Nebula
General Information What is Hubble Heritage? A monthly showcase of new and archival Hubble images. Go to the Heritage site. Back to top [ #top ]
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1-50 of 311