Just How Good is the Hubble Space Telescope?

[Noel Carboni]

One thing I do from time to time is process Hubble Space Telescope datasets into imagery.

Most folks know that the orbiting observatory runs rings around even the best ground-based telescopes, but sometimes it's fun to illustrate just how incredibly adeptly it runs those rings...

Here are two images of the same distant globular cluster, NGC 6441: One I took through my 10" LX200 and one that the Hubble captured. See if you can figure out which is which (okay, ignore the caption). :)

http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/419-2/NGC6441_Small.jpg (http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/416-1/NGC6441_Small.jpg)

http://ncarboni2.home.att.net/NGC6441_Hubble_Processed_by_Noel_Carboni_Small.jpg (http://ncarboni2.home.att.net/NGC6441_Hubble_Processed_by_Noel_Carboni.jpg)

:Chessy_Smile:

-Noel

[Noel Carboni]

Here's another good comparison...

http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/435-1/NGC_7331_Hubble_Noel.jpg

-Noel

[Noel Carboni]

And yet another... I like this one because it nicely illustrates how incredibly small the field of view of the long focal length Hubble really is!

http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/561-1/Flame_Hubble_FOV.jpg

http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/559-2/A_Small_Part_of_the_Flame_Nebula.jpg (http://www.ourdarkskies.com/gallery2/d/556-1/A_Small_Part_of_the_Flame_Nebula.jpg)

-Noel

[Radar]

I can never get tired of looking at these amazing hubble photos. I wonder who does the processing for hubble images at NASA? Are they even processed like we process? If not, there may be much more detail to reveal. I know stacking images for resolution is something new to NASA. NASA started to do this with one of their Mars orbiters to reveal more detail on the ground.

Does anyone know what the CCD technology inside hubble is?

[Mick]

That is a good comparison Noel, why does the field of view have bits missing? not square or rectangular. looks like a mosaic.