Example of Satellite Trail in Hubble Space Telescope Exposure
About This Image
Caption
This image captures the streak of an Earth-orbiting artificial satellite crossing Hubble's field of view during an observation of "The Mice" interacting galaxies (NGC 4676). A typical satellite trail is very thin and will affect less than 0.5% of a single Hubble exposure. Though in this case the satellite overlaps a portion of the target galaxy, the observation quality is not affected. That's because multiple exposures are taken of the same target. And the satellite trail is not in other frames. Developers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, have software that identifies the bad pixels from the satellite photobombing, the extent to which they affect the image, and then flags them. When flagged, scientists can recover the full field of view. Even as the number of satellites increases over the decade, these tools for cleaning the images will still be applicable.
About The Object
- Object Name
- The Mice; NGC 4676
- Object Description
- Interacting Galaxies
- R.A. Position
- 12:46:10.18
- Dec. Position
- 30:43:53.69
- Constellation
- Coma Berenices
- Distance
- 300 million light-years
About The Data
- Data Description
- The HST observations include those from program 8992 (H. Ford)
- Instrument
- ACS/WFC
- Exposure Dates
- April 7, 2002
- Filters
- F475W; F606W; F814W
About The Image
- Color Info
- These images are a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS/WFC instrument on the Hubble Space Telescope. Several filters were used to sample wide and narrow wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are: Blue: F475W, Green: F606W, Red: F814W
About The Object
- Object Name
- A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
- Object Description
- The type of astronomical object.
- R.A. Position
- Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.
- Dec. Position
- Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.
- Constellation
- One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears.
- Distance
- The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
About The Data
- Data Description
- Proposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
- Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.
- Instrument
- The science instrument used to produce the data.
- Exposure Dates
- The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
- Filters
- The camera filters that were used in the science observations.
About The Image
- Color Info
- A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented.
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