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Faint Object Camera

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Faint Object Camera (Dornier Museum)
Astronauts remove the FOC to make room for the ACS
An image of Pluto and its moon Charon revealed by the Hubble Faint Object Camera

The Faint Object Camera (FOC) was a camera installed on the Hubble Space Telescope from launch in 1990 until 2002. It was replaced by the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

The camera was built by Dornier GmbH and was funded by the European Space Agency. The unit actually consists of two complete and independent camera systems designed to provide extremely high resolution, exceeding 0.05 arcseconds. It is designed to view very faint UV light from 115 to 650 nanometers in wavelength.[1]

The camera was designed to operate at low, medium, or high resolution. The angular resolution and field of view at each resolution were as follows[2]:

Angular resolution Field of view
Low resolution (f/48) 0.043 arcseconds 22 arcseconds
Medium resolution (f/96) 0.022 arcseconds 11 arcseconds
High resolution (f/288) 0.0072 arcseconds 3.6 arcseconds

Mira

Hubble + FOC red giant star Mira A (right), officially called Omicron Ceti in the constellation Cetus, and its companion on the left. Taken on December 11, 1995

References

  1. ^ The Space Telescope Observatory (Technical report). NASA. 1982. CP-2244., page 40. A 40 MB PDF file.
  2. ^ "FOC - Faint Object Camera". Hubble. European Space Agency. 2006-12-12. Retrieved 2007-02-07.
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