Development of the second generation Wide-Field Planetary Camera for Hubble Space Telescope service mission

摘要

Abstract: The Wide Field and Planetary Camera (WFPC) is the principal instrument of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), occupying the central portion of the telescope's focal plane. The Wide Field Camera meets the originally conceived requirement for an imaging device that covers a square field of view 2.67 arc minutes on a side with a pixel size of 0.1 arc second. The so-called Planetary Camera of WFPC offers a longer effective focal length over a smaller field (yielding 0.043 arc second per pixel) to better sample the point spread function of the telescope for critical definition imaging. The first generation WFPC (WFPC-1) was initiated in late 1977 and launched with the HST in April, 1990. A second generation backup instrument (WFPC-2) currently scheduled for launch in late 1993 will carry corrective optics to restore the flawed vision of the HST. The present paper traces the history of these developments.!5