The Beauty of Hubble

For part of my dissertation project, I am using data from Hubble Space Telescope (HST). You know, that telescope that has been the source of many great astronomy coffee table books? I am looking for faint objects (white dwarfs) in that data, and have also taken images of the same star fields with a telescope from the ground. (The 1m at CTIO in Chile, to be exact.) This week I am trying to match stars in the two data sets. Even though they are imaging the same parts of the sky, I will have good measurements for only a few overlapping stars. That's because HST is able to find stars that are much fainter than the 1-meter can see, and many of the brighter stars that are easily imaged with the 1-meter will appear totally saturated in HST. (Hence the need for both.)

Today I was working to line up the images exactly, to find these overlapping stars, and I was struck with how beautifully crystal clear the HST images are. I include a sample below for comparison. The data from the ground (left) is like looking at something underwater vs. looking at it with nothing in the way. (That's not far from the truth.) Keep in mind that the 1-meter data I have is good. The HST data is just beautiful. It's the super star (no pun intended) for good reason.