HST Is Back
And Doing Science
Phil Plait, aka The Bad Astronomer [and worse political pundit. - ed] reports that as of Oct. 28, the Hubble Space Telescope has been up and running, using its Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WF/PC II) to do observations as intended.
It went offline when engineers were trying to restore Hubble back to speed after a major piece of hardware failed. They were able to get a backup piece working, but other problems delayed the operation. Now, however, things are looking good, and it looks like we have a working telescope.
This is known technically as a good thingTM.
Take a look at the picture freshly retrieved from the restored system. Of course, like many – most! – of the photos taken by HST, it’s gorgeous! WF/PC has been (lovingly) called the Wide-Field/Publicity Camera for a reason, you know!
