Wide Field Camera 3: Extending Hubble's Vision, Packed with Power

  • Released Wednesday, June 18th, 2008
  • Updated Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023 at 1:55PM
  • ID: 10266

When placed on the Hubble Space Telescope, WFC3 will provide unprecedented capabilities for imaging the cosmos at near-ultraviolet and at near-infrared wavelengths. The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) will study a diverse range of objects and phenomena, from early and distant galaxy formation to nearby planetary nebulae, and finally our own backyard — the planets and other bodies of our Solar System. WFC3 extends Hubble's capability not only by seeing deeper into the universe but also by seeing simultaneously into the infrared and ultraviolet. WFC3 can, for example, simultaneously observe young, hot stars (glowing predominantly in the ultraviolet) and older, cooler stars (glowing predominantly in the infrared) in the same galaxy.

Credits

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Missions

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Datasets used in this visualization

HST (Collected with the WFPC2 sensor)

Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) was installed in Dec 1993 and used to obtain high resolution images of astronomical objects. This camera was removed in the last servicing mission so it is no longer in service.

Dataset can be found at: http://www.stsci.edu/hst/wfpc2/wfpc2_diag.html

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