Hubble space telescope has been brought back online, and has tried to take pictures of a particularly intriguing galaxy pair, NASA said on Thursday.
Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147.
A serious equipment failure aboard Hubble popped up on Sept. 27.The glitch prevented Hubble from sending data to Earth, and since then NASA has tried to switch to the backup equipment to regain data relay capabilities.
The new image released by NASA demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a "perfect 10" both for performance and beauty -- the two galaxies happen to be oriented so that they appear to mark the number 10.
The galaxy pair was photographed on October 27-28. Arp 147 lies in the constellation Cetus, and it is more than 400 million light-years away from Earth.
The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency and is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
NASA had planned to send seven astronauts aboard space shuttle Atlantis to give the last service call to Hubble in October. However, the unexpected malfunction has delayed the mission to early February in 2009.
Source: Xinhua
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