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How Good is the Amazing
Hubble Space Telescope?
Cartoon: Man on street has telescope eyeballs reads newspaper in vending machine very far away
If you could see as well as the Wide Field and Planetary Camera on the Hubble Space Telescope, you would be able to read the fine print on a newspaper one mile away!

You may have seen some of the awesome pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope. These pictures were actually taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) that flies aboard the Hubble.

WFPC2 installation on HSTIn this 1993 picture, NASA Space Shuttle astronauts install the WFPC2 camera on the Hubble Space Telescope. Besides taking pictures, the camera acts like eyeglasses to correct a flaw in the telescope's mirror.

This camera is very sensitive to the faintest light, and it can focus on objects very far away.

Instead of trying to read newspapers, WFPC2 focuses on the faintest and most far away objects in the universe. They include other galaxies, cloudy bubbles of gas from dying stars, and gassy regions that are the nurseries where stars are born.

See some of these breath-taking objects as captured by WFPC2. Go to WFPC images

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Webmaster: Diane Fisher
Last Updated: September 08, 2005
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