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NEW (RESTORED) HUBBLE PICTURES
The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) is Hubble Space Telescope'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 during the first spacewalk of Space Shuttle mission STS-125 on May 14, 2009.
The Wide Field Camera 3 being prepared for its launch
September 9, 2009--A dusty pillar lit from within by newborn stars is among the first cosmic beauties snapped by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new instrument installed in May during the final servicing mission to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope.
The WFC3 replaces the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, the longest working instrument aboard the orbiting observatory. That camera was responsible for some of Hubble's most iconic pictures, and WFC3 is expected to become one of the next most popular instruments: It's already scheduled to be used in over half of the spacecraft's observations over the next year.
Hubble's new visible-light picture of a star-filled pillar, released on September 9, 2009, tells only part of the story. An infrared image (bottom) of the same structure, part of the Carina nebula, cuts through the thick clouds of gas and dust to reveal the infant stars hiding inside.
Unlike its predecessor camera, the WFC3 can pick up light all the way into infrared wavelengths. This allows astronomers to see, for example, the particularly energetic baby star in the pillar's center that is shooting out twin jets of glowing gas.
These jets are traveling at speeds of up to 850,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) an hour, and in total they span more than 15 light-years.
A dying star on the verge of exploding creates a cosmic "butterfly" in a new picture from Hubble's WFC3. The central star, now obscured by a dense band of dust, was once five times the mass of the sun. Over the past two thousand years the star has expelled most of its outer gas envelope to create the ghostly "wings," which together span about two light-years.
Peering into the crowded core of the giant star cluster Omega Centauri, Hubble photographed a rainbow assortment of more than a hundred thousand stars, as seen in a picture released September 9, 2009. This riot of color represents only a small fraction of Omega Centauri's total population of about ten million stars.
The new image shows off the broad color gamut covered by Hubble's WFC3 instrument. Golden stars like our sun, puffed-up red giants, super-hot blue stars, long-lived red stars, and the burnt-out shells of dead white dwarfs vie for attention in the same frame.
"By studying pictures like this, we can learn about the physics of stars as they approach old age," Bob O'Connell, chair of Hubble's science oversight committee, said at a press conference.
This new image of Stephen's Quintet, taken by the recently restored Hubble, shows a cluster of what appears to be five closely packed galaxies. But the quintet is an illusion: The bluish spiral galaxy in the upper left corner, called NGC 7319, is actually about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group.
Meanwhile, "the four yellowish galaxies you see are gravitationally interacting with each other," Hubble science chair Bob O'Connell said at a September 9, 2009, press briefing. "We expect that, over time, they will eventually merge into a single big galaxy."
Albert Einstein predicted that the gravity of massive objects could actually bend light, creating an optical illusion. Hubble's newly updated Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) captured a dramatic example of this phenomenon, known as "gravitational lensing."
In a set of four photographs released September 9, 2009, the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 bends the light of galaxies behind it, creating funhouse mirror-like reflections in space.
One such effect, the "Dragon" (top left), is actually several reflections of a background galaxy overlapping one another, Hubble science oversight chair Bob O'Conner explained.
(NGC)
NEW (RESTORED) HUBBLE PICTURES
The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) is Hubble Space Telescope'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 during the first spacewalk of Space Shuttle mission STS-125 on May 14, 2009.
The Wide Field Camera 3 being prepared for its launch
September 9, 2009--A dusty pillar lit from within by newborn stars is among the first cosmic beauties snapped by the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new instrument installed in May during the final servicing mission to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope.
The WFC3 replaces the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, the longest working instrument aboard the orbiting observatory. That camera was responsible for some of Hubble's most iconic pictures, and WFC3 is expected to become one of the next most popular instruments: It's already scheduled to be used in over half of the spacecraft's observations over the next year.
Hubble's new visible-light picture of a star-filled pillar, released on September 9, 2009, tells only part of the story. An infrared image (bottom) of the same structure, part of the Carina nebula, cuts through the thick clouds of gas and dust to reveal the infant stars hiding inside.
Unlike its predecessor camera, the WFC3 can pick up light all the way into infrared wavelengths. This allows astronomers to see, for example, the particularly energetic baby star in the pillar's center that is shooting out twin jets of glowing gas.
These jets are traveling at speeds of up to 850,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) an hour, and in total they span more than 15 light-years.
A dying star on the verge of exploding creates a cosmic "butterfly" in a new picture from Hubble's WFC3. The central star, now obscured by a dense band of dust, was once five times the mass of the sun. Over the past two thousand years the star has expelled most of its outer gas envelope to create the ghostly "wings," which together span about two light-years.
Peering into the crowded core of the giant star cluster Omega Centauri, Hubble photographed a rainbow assortment of more than a hundred thousand stars, as seen in a picture released September 9, 2009. This riot of color represents only a small fraction of Omega Centauri's total population of about ten million stars.
The new image shows off the broad color gamut covered by Hubble's WFC3 instrument. Golden stars like our sun, puffed-up red giants, super-hot blue stars, long-lived red stars, and the burnt-out shells of dead white dwarfs vie for attention in the same frame.
"By studying pictures like this, we can learn about the physics of stars as they approach old age," Bob O'Connell, chair of Hubble's science oversight committee, said at a press conference.
This new image of Stephen's Quintet, taken by the recently restored Hubble, shows a cluster of what appears to be five closely packed galaxies. But the quintet is an illusion: The bluish spiral galaxy in the upper left corner, called NGC 7319, is actually about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group.
Meanwhile, "the four yellowish galaxies you see are gravitationally interacting with each other," Hubble science chair Bob O'Connell said at a September 9, 2009, press briefing. "We expect that, over time, they will eventually merge into a single big galaxy."
Albert Einstein predicted that the gravity of massive objects could actually bend light, creating an optical illusion. Hubble's newly updated Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) captured a dramatic example of this phenomenon, known as "gravitational lensing."
In a set of four photographs released September 9, 2009, the massive galaxy cluster Abell 370 bends the light of galaxies behind it, creating funhouse mirror-like reflections in space.
One such effect, the "Dragon" (top left), is actually several reflections of a background galaxy overlapping one another, Hubble science oversight chair Bob O'Conner explained.
(NGC)
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