NICMOS Image of HR 8799 Planetary System

This is an image of the star HR 8799 taken by Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) in 1998. A mask within the camera (coronagraph) blocks most of the light from the star. In addition, software has been used to digitally subtract more starlight. Nevertheless, scattered light from HR 8799 dominates the image, obscuring the faint planets.

About the colours

This image was originally black and white and recorded only overall brightness. These brightness values were translated into a range of arbitrary colors. Such color "maps" can be useful in helping to distinguish subtly varying brightness in an image.

About the data

The original NICMOS data were from the HST proposal 7226 : E. Becklin (University of California, Los Angeles) et al.

The science team comprises: R. Soummer, B. Hagan, and A. Rajan (STScI), L. Pueyo and A. Thormann (JHU), and C. Marois (Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, Victoria).