The image from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope shows the most famous of all planetary nebulae: the Ring Nebula (M57). In this October 1998 image taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, the telescope looked down a barrel of gas cast off by a dying star thousands of years ago.
Using the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion.
Previously unseen details of a mysterious, complex structure within the Carina Nebula are revealed by this image of the "Keyhole Nebula," obtained by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
This picture of the Crab Nebula, taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, show the six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion.
This is an image of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula located about 8,000 light-years away. The image, taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on Hubble, reveals the true shape of MyCn18 to be an hourglass with an intricate pattern of "etchings" in its walls.
From ground-based telescopes, the so-called "ant nebula" (Menzel 3, or Mz 3) resembles the head and thorax of an ant. This dramatic NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, reveals the "ant's" body as a pair of fiery lobes protruding from a dying, sun-like star.
The Whirlpool galaxy, M51, has been one of the most photogenic galaxies in amateur and professional astronomy. Easily photographed and viewed by smaller telescopes, this celestial beauty is studied extensively in a range of wavelengths by large ground- and space-based observatories.
One of the most complex planetary nebulae ever seen, NGC 6543 is nicknamed the "Cat's Eye Nebula." The image, taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 on Hubble, reveals surprisingly intricate structures including concentric gas shells, jets of high-speed gas and unusual shock-induced knots of gas.
A huge, billowing pair of gas and dust clouds are captured in this stunning NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the supermassive star Eta Carinae. This star was the site of a giant outburst about 150 years ago, when it became one of the brightest stars in the southern sky.
Several hundred never-before-seen galaxies are visible in this "deepest-ever" view of the universe, called the Hubble Deep Field. The image was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken by the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 over ten consecutive days in December 1995.
These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars are part of the "Eagle Nebula." The picture was taken on April 1, 1995, with the Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2.
The historic Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, developed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, left JPL Wednesday morning, Oct. 13, for points east. Known informally as "The Camera That Saved Hubble," the baby-grand-piano-sized camera was on temporary loan from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington.
During its stay at JPL, the historic camera was a popular attraction for groups of school children and other visitors, including thousands of people who attended JPL's annual Open House in May.
Next stop for the camera: It will be on display for a short time at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in Colorado, and then it will return to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington, where it will go on permanent display. The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was the workhorse camera on Hubble after being added to the observatory in December 1993 to correct an imaging problem created by the telescope's faulty primary mirror. During its tenure aboard Hubble, the camera produced many of the mission's most stunning deep space images. Its high-image resolution and quality are some of the reasons the camera became the space telescope's most requested instrument during its operational lifetime. Logging 15 years aboard the observatory, the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was Hubble's longest-serving instrument. Space-walking astronauts retrieved the camera during the final Hubble servicing mission in May 2009. More information about the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 is at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wfpc2 . An image gallery contains some of the camera's historic photos.
DC Agle (818) 393-9011?
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.?
agle@jpl.nasa.gov
