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Posted by Jonathan Thornburg -- remove - on November 2, 2006, 8:09 am
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For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, some good space-science news: NASA
has announced that they're going to service the Hubble Space Telescope
again after all, probably in fall 2008. The NASA press is at
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/HQ_06343_HST_announcement.html
As well as various other maintainance, they plan to replace one of
the fine guidance sensors, install two new instruments
show/hide quoted text
> the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) and Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The
> COS is the most sensitive ultraviolet spectrograph ever flown on
> Hubble. The instrument will probe the cosmic web, the large-scale
> structure of the universe whose form is determined by the gravity of
> dark matter and is traced by the spatial distribution of galaxies and
> intergalactic gas.
>
> WFC3 is a new camera sensitive across a wide range of wavelengths
> (colors), including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. It will
> have a broad inquiry from the planets in our solar system to the early
> and distant galaxies beyond Hubble's current reach, to nearby galaxies
> with stories to tell about their star formation histories.
and try
show/hide quoted text
> to repair the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph. Installed in 1997,
> it stopped working in 2004. The instrument is used for high resolution
> studies in visible and ultraviolet light of both nearby star systems and
> distant galaxies, providing information about the motions and chemical
> makeup of stars, planetary atmospheres, and other galaxies.
The press release doesn't say which instruments COS and WFC3 will
replace.
ciao,
--
Max-Planck-Institut fuer Gravitationsphysik (Albert-Einstein-Institut),
Golm, Germany, "Old Europe" http://www.aei.mpg.de/~jthorn/home.html
"Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the
powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
-- quote by Freire / poster by Oxfam
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> COS is the most sensitive ultraviolet spectrograph ever flown on
> Hubble. The instrument will probe the cosmic web, the large-scale
> structure of the universe whose form is determined by the gravity of
> dark matter and is traced by the spatial distribution of galaxies and
> intergalactic gas.
>
> WFC3 is a new camera sensitive across a wide range of wavelengths
> (colors), including infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. It will
> have a broad inquiry from the planets in our solar system to the early
> and distant galaxies beyond Hubble's current reach, to nearby galaxies
> with stories to tell about their star formation histories.