Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2
Hubble imaging instrument
Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 was Hubble's principal visible-light camera from the first servicing mission through 2009. Jet Propulsion Laboratory built the replacement around four 800-by-800-pixel CCD detectors and incorporated corrective optics tailored to Hubble's spherical aberration. Three wide-field channels surveyed a broad field while a fourth planetary channel sampled a smaller field more finely. WFPC2 produced many of the observatory's defining images before Wide Field Camera 3 replaced it during Servicing Mission 4.
Parent systems
The larger spacecraft or system this hardware belongs to.
Instrument dossier
Identity and integration
- Official designation
- Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
- Installed
- STS-61, December 1993
- Parent observatory
- Hubble Space Telescope
Science capability
- Optical channels
- Three wide-field cameras and one higher-resolution planetary camera
- Detector arrangement
- Four adjacent fields combined into the instrument's characteristic stepped mosaic
- Imaging performance and field of view
- 2.7 arcminutes across the four-camera mosaic
Detector and optical systems
- Detector complement
- Four 800 x 800 pixel charge-coupled devices
Mechanical and electrical
- Instrument mass
- 281 kilograms
- Instrument dimensions
- 0.8 x 2.2 x 2.0 meters
Installation and operations
- Installation and removal operations
- Inserted as a radial-bay replacement during STS-61 and removed for Wide Field Camera 3 during STS-125
- Mission use and service life
- More than 15 years aboard Hubble
Additional specifications
- Developer
- NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Instrument class
- Visible and near-ultraviolet imaging camera with internal corrective optics
- Aberration correction
- Corrective relay optics were built into the replacement camera
- Removed
- STS-125, May 2009
- Replacement
- Wide Field Camera 3
- Crew relationship
- Installed and later removed by spacewalking Shuttle crews
Supported mission records
Missions that carried, used, tested, serviced, or depended on this hardware.
Photo Archive
Documented views of this individual vehicle, with source and credit retained alongside each image.