The Hubble Spacecraft Telescope Images

The images projected on the on-stage screens were captured by the second Wide Field and Planetary Camera (WFPC2), one of five scientific instruments aboard the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Installed in 1993 to replace the original camera launched with the Hubble three years earlier (the WF/PC), WFPC2 is able to see distant objects with unprecedented clarity. While ground-based observatories have established powerful techniques for the study of objects within our astronomical neighborhood, WFPC2 images now extend our ability to use these techniques to distances 10 times greater than those possible from the ground. WFPC2 divides its field of view among four internal camera systems: three f/13 wide field cameras and one f/28 planetary camera. The wide field cameras give the telescope a panoramic view, providing the greatest sensitivity for faint objects. The planetary camera provides for about 2.2 times the resolution of the other three systems, but with a similar field of view.

The designers of Seven Enigmas chose Hubble images that would resonate with the space of the stage and with other forms visible at a particular moment -- the open field of a distant galaxy, the body of a nebula or a planet, the linear path of a comet. Over sixty images appear during the production, including scientific displays of Jupiter, the Shoemaker-Levy comet, galaxy clusters, nebulae, and stars in different phases of formation.

The colors we see in these images have been arbitrarily assigned by scientists in order to make the information from the Hubble�s cameras visible on earth. Instead of photographs as we usually thing of them, the Hubble�s cameras download digital information, including ultraviolet and infrared spectrums. Since our eyes cannot see these light spectrums, either in our own atmosphere or in outer space, astronomers must assign colors to these frequencies in order to make them visible to us. In this way, the images projected on-screen are similar to the sculptures and animated grids that were formed around the dances. They show us representations of space and movement the we would not otherwise be able to see, or to contemplate for more than a single instant.