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M.S. Wiggs, J. Biretta, S. Baggett, S. Casertano, C. O'Dea, A. Schultz, S. Gonzaga, I. Heyer, M. McMaster, A. Koekemoer, A. Riess (Space Telescope Science Institute)
We review the status of the Wide-Field Planetary Camera II (WFPC2) onboard the Hubble Space Telescope and summarize results of re-commissioning tests performed after the December 1999 Servicing Mission (SM3a). While WFPC2 itself was not serviced, there is always concern about contamination or other unexpected effects. Although contamination growth rates increased during the mission (as expected), bi-weekly decontaminations immediately after SM3a, and subsequent monthly decons, have successfully restored the UV throughput to their pre-SM3a values; there is no evidence of any permanent contamination. A photometric sweep covering the entire wavelength range of WFPC2 shows that any changes in the photometric response are less than ~1% at visible wavelengths, and less than 2% or 3% in the UV. No changes due to SM3a were seen in the flat field response, read noise, dark current, a-to-d gain ratios, and point spread function tests. In addition to the SM3a results, we also discuss the general status of WFPC2, including new results on the analysis of dithered data, the now-public on-the-fly calibration (OTFC) archive system, and plans for calibrating WFPC2 in Cycle 9. New results on CTE are discussed in a separate poster.
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