(ACS ISR 2026-03): Investigating ACS/WFC Amp-to-Amp Sensitivities
April 01, 2026G.S. Anand and N.A. Grogin
Tools and Status
The Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) is a third-generation instrument aboard the Hubble Space Telescope and has two operational channels: the Wide Field Channel (WFC), which provides high-throughput, wide-field optical and near-infrared imaging, and the Solar Blind Channel (SBC), which delivers high-resolution, far-ultraviolet imaging. The High Resolution Channel (HRC), which provided high-resolution optical imaging, is no longer operational.
ACS's primary purpose at the time of installation aboard Hubble was to greatly increase imaging discovery efficiency with a combination of detector area and quantum efficiency that surpassed previous instruments and a broad assortment of filters designed to address a large range of scientific goals. ACS offers the largest field-of-view and highest throughput available on Hubble in both optical and far-ultraviolet wavelengths.
In addition to its primary capabilities listed above, ACS also currently offers:
- Optical grism spectroscopy with WFC
- FUV prism spectroscopy with SBC
- Imaging polarimetry with WFC
- Imaging spectropolarimetry with WFC
ACS Images
Abell 370
Rich galaxy cluster Abell 370 from the Hubble Frontier Fields project (ACS/WFC and WFC3/IR). Credit to NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team (STScI).
Andromeda Galaxy (M31)
Andromeda galaxy (M31) from the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury program (ACS/WFC). Credit to NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler.
Orion Nebula (M43)
Orion Nebula (M43) from the HST Orion Treasury Project (ACS/WFC). Credit to NASA, ESA, Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team, Massimo Robberto (STScI, ESA).
Egg Nebula
Egg Nebula in polarized light (ACS/WFC). Credit to NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), W. Sparks (STScI) and R. Sahai (JPL).
Current Status
WFC is operating nominally
SBC is operating nominally
HRC is not operational
Program Information
ACS Instrument Resources
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Instrument Design
ACS Detectors, Characterization, Documentation, and System Throughputs
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Proposing
Phase I and II Resources, Exposure Time Calculator, and ACS Dither Patterns
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Calibration
Calibrating ACS Data, Cycle Calibration Plans, and ACS/WFC Annealing
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Performance
Anomalies and Artifacts, CTE Information, and Photometric and Pixel-Based CTE Corrections
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Data Analysis
Aperture Corrections, Distortion, DQ Flag Definitions, DrizzlePac, Pixel Area Maps, Prism/Grism, Slitlessutils, and Zeropoints
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Software Tools
CALACS Tools, ACSTOOLS, and ACS Jupyter Notebooks
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Documentation
ACS Instrument and Data Handbooks, ISRs, STANs, and Conference Posters
Recent News
Recently Published ISRs
Filter Results
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(ACS ISR 2026-02): Empirical PSFs for the ACS/SBC
March 26, 2026J. Anderson and R. J. Avila -
(ACS ISR 2026-01): Using 23 Years of ACS/SBC Data to Understand Backgrounds: Explaining & Predicting Background Variations
January 08, 2026C. J. R. Clark et al. -
(ACS ISR 2025-04): Using 23 Years of ACS/SBC Data to Understand Backgrounds: Significant Reductions in Expected Background Levels
December 30, 2025C. J. R. Clark et al. -
(ACS ISR 2025-03): Principal Component Analysis for ACS/WFC Superbias Temporal Variation
October 21, 2025A. M. Guzman and N. A. Grogin
Recently Published STANs
Filter Results
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ACS STAN March 2026
March 31, 2026
ACS Software Updates
ACSTOOLS
v3.8.1
- Released May 12, 2026
- Added satellite detection compatibility with scikit-image v0.26.0 or later
v3.8.0
- Released April 28, 2026
- Added compatibility for photutils v3.0
- Dropped support for Python 3.8 and 3.9
HSTCAL v3.1.0
- Released on December 13, 2024
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CALACS updated to Version 10.4.0
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Implementation of the "Parallel and Serial CTE correction" for ACS WFC data
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HST Prefooter
HST Help Desk
Please contact the HST Help Desk with any questions.