Wide Field Camera 3 instrument optical design for the Hubble Space Telescope

摘要

The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument was designed and built to replace the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) instrument Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and to provide improved ultra-violet through near infra-red imaging capability during the extended HST mission. The WFC3 instrument consists of a two-channel instrument providing diffraction-limited imaging across an average 160 arc second square field of view over 200 to 1000 nm on a 4k x 4k Si detector and an average 135 arc second square field of view over 850 to 1700 nm on a 1k x 1k HgCdTe detector. We describe the optical design and predicted performance of WFC3.