Αfter repair mission
Hubble delivers new stunning space images
Planetary nebula NGC 6302, a star in the final stages of its life.
This undated handout image provided by NASA, released Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2009, taken by the refurbished Hubble Space Telescope, shows a celestial object that looks like a delicate butterfly.
Stephan's Quintet
A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide color range, from young, blue stars to aging, red stars.
Stars bursting to life in the chaotic Carina Nebula.
To compare with 2000
Colorful Stars Galore Inside Globular Star Cluster Omega Centauri.
To compare with 2000
Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217.
The signature balloon-shaped clouds of gas blown from a pair of massive stars called Eta Carinae have tantalized astronomers for decades. Eta Carinae has a volatile temperament, prone to violent outbursts over the past 200 years. In a spectrogram resolved from one lobe, iron and nitrogen define the outer material cast off in the nineteenth century from Eta Carinae.
All pictures were taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3, which was installed during the repair mission.
This camera has replaced the WFPC2, adding a second channel in the near-infrarred range.
It covers the visible spectrum, part of the near-ultraviolet, and portion of the near-infrared, complementing the infrared channel, which goes from 800 to 1700 nanometers.
According to NASA, with these two channels, WFC3 will achieve excellent panchromatic (full - spectrum) imaging.
Stellar objects are not just in the visible spectrum, but also exist in the blue (near-UV) and red (near-IR) extremes.
WFC3 was designed to study light in these regions of the spectrum better than Hubble's current capabilities.
