Your Instruments

THE HST is a reflector telescope, using mirrors to gather and focus light. Isaac Newton was the first person to make a reflector telescope in 1668. Newton’s telescope is 15cm long with a primary mirror only 5cm across and a mass of about 1kg. Hubble is 1320cm long, its primary mirror is 240cm across and it has a mass of 11,110 kg.

Newton gave a duplicate of his telescope to the Royal Society in 1672. This is locked away in the vaults of the RS but they had this copy made in the 18^th century which is now on show in London.

The HST has a range of detectors and filters that can be put in its light path:

ACS (Advanced Camera for Surveys) is a wide field, high resolution imager for the UV - optical IR with many filters, a polarizer, a coronagraph and slitless spectrometry capabilities. It was installed into HST in the SM3B servicing mission in March 2002.

STScI ACS homepage

The ST-ECF ACS slitless spectrometry project

WFPC2 (Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2) is a near-UV to far red general purpose CCD imager with broad and narrow band filters, polarizers and linear ramp filters.

WFPC2 homepage at STScI

NICMOS (Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrograph) is a near-IR (0.8-2.2micron) imager, installed in February 1997, with three cameras (256x256 HgCdTe detectors) and coronagraphic, polarimetric and slitless grism spectrographic modes. It ran out of cryogen in January 1999, but has been revived in the SM3B servicing mission in March 2002.

NICMOS homepage at STScI

NICMOS page at ST-ECF.

STIS (Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph) is a long slit UV and optical imager and spectrograph, installed in February 1997, with resolutions 1000, 10000, 30000 & 11000 in the UV (photon counting MAMA detectors) and 800 & 7000 in the optical (CCD detector)

STIS homepage at STScI

STIS homepage at GSFC.

FGS (Fine Guidance Sensor) is an interferometric guidance system which can be used for high precision astrometry

FGS homepage at STScI