Wide Field and Planetary camera for Hubble Telescope, 1980s.

This is one of two cameras that the telescope carries, and is used for taking general images of planets, stars and galaxies. The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) was designed to see seven times further into space than had been posible before, without the distortion caused by the Earth's atmosphere. It is a reflecting telescope and its main mirror has a diameter of 2.5 metres. Work began in 1977 and the HST was finally launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery on 24th April 1990. Problems with its giant mirror meant that it did not initially work as well as expected. Corrective optics were installed in 1993, greatly improving the telescope's performance, enabling it to produce images showing the Universe in unprecedented detail.