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Credit:
Akira Fujii |
In
the spring of 2000, the Hubble Heritage Project
asked our visitors for suggestions on where
to point the Hubble Space Telescope.
For 12 weeks, Internet users young and old,
including students, teachers, professional
and amateur astronomers,
and other scientists
and nonscientists
gave us many enthusiastic
ideas on what to
view.
Our
instructions were to provide the name
of an astronomical
object that would be visible during the
late
summer, and
to explain
why
this object should be observed with
the
Hubble Space Telescope.
By the
end of the voting session, over 5,000 suggestions
had been received. We read all of the proposals,
which listed hundreds of different objects,
ranging from our own Moon to galaxies at the
farthest edges
of the universe.
With
so many suggestions, the Heritage Team had
anticipated
that the task of choosing a single winner
would
be difficult. In fact, however, it turned
out that a single
celestial object quickly emerged as the clear
winner. The Horsehead Nebula in Orion received
more votes than any other distinct object.
As a veritable icon of astronomy, it is instantly
recognizable to a large segment of the population,
even those with limited contact with astronomy.
The
Horsehead's large size presented a problem
for our observations with Hubble; it was necessary
to confine the imaging to a small portion
of the object
covering just the "nose" and
"ears" of the horse. By early
summer in 2000, we had selected the four best
color filters with which to view the nebula,
and had worked out exposure times and four
separate pointings with
the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2)
that would cover the desired portion of the
Horsehead. These detailed specifications
were then submitted to the telescope's observing
queue.
In
August 2000, the Sun had moved away from Orion
sufficiently for the observations to begin.
But then the problems started to crop up with
guide stars in the field used to point the
telescope and we only got an incomplete set
of observations on this first attempt. The
failed series of observations of the Horsehead
Nebula were rescheduled with the use of different
guide stars. In September
2000, observations resumed, only to have more
guide star problems! So we scheduled the observations
yet again, with still another change in guide
stars. Finally we finished the observing in
February 2001, nearly six months after the
original observations were taken.
 Fortunately,
we hope that the resulting image is one of
the most spectacular Hubble images, richly
rewarding all of the efforts of those who
suggested the target, and those of us who
worked to obtain the observations. Thanks
to everyone who suggested targets for us to
observe, and also to the many
dedicated staff members at the Space Telescope
Science Institute who had to work extra hard
to obtain the images!
Comments
from Horsehead Voters
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