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S. Gonzaga, J. A. Biretta (STScI), WFPC2 Team
We review the current status and calibration of the Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) on-board the Hubble Space Telescope. The instrument continues to perform extremely well after 5 years on orbit and >60,000 images. Photometric accuracies of a few percent are routinely possible for common observing modes. There has also been substantial progress in characterizing less commonly used modes, such as polarimetry and ramp filters. Small long-term changes have occured in some calibrations, and new reference files are routinely generated to track these (e.g. hotpixels, darks, flat fields, and astrometry). Separate posters discuss the excellent long-term photometric stability as well as anomalies which affect faint targets. Finally, new techniques (e.g. sub-pixel dithering and composite PSF subtraction) are allowing observers to push the instrument to the limits of its capabilities.
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