Hubble Update for “Teacher’s Thursday” on 10 April 2003 Max Mutchler Space Telescope Science Institute

Hubble’s latest image…hot off the press! (a proto-planetary nebula)

Hubble launched into orbit on 24 April 1990 Baltimore, we have a problem: spherical aberration! Space Shuttle servicing missions: 1993, 1997, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2010 Behind-the-scenes: Observing the Helix Nebula with Hubble’s new workhorse, the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Hubble mission overview

Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in the clean room at Ball Aerospace in Boulder, Colorado

This is the ACS group in front of a mockup of Hubble’s aft shroud, where the astronauts practiced installing ACS. I’m 3 rd from the left in the back row  We are in the clean room at NASA Goddard in Maryland in August 2001.

Space Shuttle Columbia astronauts installed ACS on 7 March 2002

A more typical day at work….no astronauts, and not a clean room!

Early ACS science highlights First images in April 2002: Tadpole, Cone, Mice, Omega Nebula Distant supernovae: accelerating universe, dark energy Behind-the-scenes sneak preview: Helix Nebula, Ultra Deep Field

During the Leonid meteor shower on 19 November 2002, while the Hubble Space Telescope was pointed away from the oncoming meteors, it observed the Helix Nebula

Hubble observations of the Helix Nebula during the Leonid meteor shower on 19 November 2002 Hubble’s scientific instruments:

Two CCD chips with… …a gap between them… …and many cosmic rays. A single ACS Wide Field Channel (WFC) exposure

Raw data must be carefully calibrated and have detector artifacts and cosmic rays removed before it can be used for scientific analyses, or for making informative color images. A cosmic ray A hot pixel Zooming-in on part of a raw ACS image

The anatomy of a pseudo-scientific hoax: an “investigator” (editor of UFO magazine?) plays with a SOHO image in PhotoShop, until he gets a typical cosmic ray to look more colorful and smooth. He tries to cloak himself and his analysis with NASA’s air of scientific rigor, and immediately publishes the most far-fetched conclusion possible - not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but in a shamefully gullible newspaper.

658 nm 502 nm OK, back to the Helix observations! We took exposures in a 3 x 3 mosaic pattern with two narrow-band filters that only allow light with wavelengths of 502 nm and 658 nm.

Detector: ACS / WFC Filter: F502N [O III] doubly-ionized Oxygen emission 3 x 3 mosaic 18 exposures

Detector: ACS / WFC Filter: F502N [O III] doubly-ionized Oxygen emission (assign blue color) 3 x 3 mosaic 18 exposures

Detector: ACS / WFC Filter: F658N  Hydrogen-alpha emission 3 x 3 mosaic 18 exposures

Detector: ACS / WFC Filter: F658N  Hydrogen-alpha emission (assign red color) 3 x 3 mosaic 18 exposures

Well, I would have put the new ACS color image right here. But for now, there is just this teaser: an older color image made with WFPC2 data… Hubble’s new Helix Nebula will be released on “Astronomy Day” 10 May Watch for it in the news, or at:

James Webb Space Telescope Launch planned for ~2010

Forever in their debt…

Hubble Update for “Teacher’s Thursday” on 10 April 2003 Any questions?