Wide Field and Planetary Camera

However, it produced uniquely valuable high resolution images of relatively bright astronomical objects, allowing for a number of discoveries to be made by HST even in its aberrated condition.

WFPC was proposed by James A. Westphal, a professor of planetary science at Caltech, and was designed, constructed, and managed by JPL.

[1] The high sensitivity offered such promise that many astronomers strongly argued that CCDs should be considered for Hubble Space Telescope instrumentation.

This first WFPC consisted of two separate cameras, each comprising 4 800x800 pixel Texas Instruments CCDs arranged to cover a contiguous field of view.

The Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 improved on its predecessor and incorporated corrective optics needed to overcome the main mirror defect.

Wide Field and Planetary Camera view of Jupiter, 1991
WFPC image of Messier 100 (NGC 4321)
Astronauts practice replacing the WFPC on Earth in water tank to simulate working in space in 1993. The model being used is a full-scale training version of the WFPC
Here is the first light image for the Wide Field and Planetary Camera of HST, taken in May 1990; this view is near star HD96755 in the open cluster NGC 3532 . [ 5 ] This view is 11 by 14 arcseconds of the sky. [ 5 ]
The Wide Field and Planetary Camera in space while it was being exchanged for Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 during STS-61 , 1993
On the left, an un-corrected WFPC image of M100 in November 1993, next to an image by its replacement instrument with corrected optics