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Latest News
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Galaxy Silhouettes |
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured a rare alignment between two spiral galaxies. The outer rim of a small, foreground galaxy is silhouetted in front of a larger background galaxy. Skeletal tentacles of dust can be seen extending beyond the small galaxy's disk of starlight. From ground-based telescopes, the two galaxies look like a single blob. But the Advanced Camera's sharp "eye" distinguished the blob as two galaxies, cataloged as 2MASX J00482185-2507365. The images were taken on Sept. 19, 2006. |
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Around The Institute
Webb Telescope Approved for Development/Launch
On July 10, 2008, NASA formally approved the JWST project to move into its implementation phase. This decision followed a successful Preliminary Design
Review (PDR) in March 2008 and a Non-Advocate Review in April. While all the science instruments and the "long lead" items like the primary mirror segments
are already being manufactured, this approval marks the transition of the program into Phase C (Final Design and Fabrication). Phase D covers system
assembly, integration and testing and launch. Read more...
Hubble Servicing Mission 4
Hubble precisely measured the age of the universe. It found evidence of dark energy. It brought you images of distant
galaxies in the young universe. And now, with the state-of-the-art instruments delivered by Servicing Mission 4 (SM4),
the Hubble Space Telescope will look onto the universe with new eyes, surpassing even its previous vision. Hubble was
designed to be repaired and upgraded by astronauts, and these servicing missions have occurred several times since
Hubble’s launch in 1990. NASA has selected a crew for the upcoming servicing, and the astronauts have begun
training. Read more...
IAU Symposium 258: The Ages of Stars
How old is that star? That is one of the most difficult questions to answer in galactic astrophysics. Stellar ages
lie at the heart of astrophysics, and stellar evolution is all about time and how stars change with time. Stellar
and galactic evolution cannot be understood without some knowledge of ages. Now is an appropriate time to examine
the problem of stellar ages in detail. IAU Symposium 258 will bring together astronomers from the around the world to discuss
the current state of the problem of estimating ages of individual stars and of populations, where the advances are now being made,
and what the near future offers. Read more...
HLA Data Release 2 Includes WFPC2 Observations
We are pleased to announce that the Hubble Legacy Archive (HLA) has entered its Data
Release 2 (DR2) phase of operation. The highlight of DR2 is the inclusion of enhanced
WFPC2 images produced by CADC. This more than triples the number of enhanced HLA images. In
addition, the number of ACS source lists has more than tripled, with ~70 % of the ACS images
having both DAOphot and SExtractor lists. A number of major user-interface improvements have
also been added, including a "shopping cart" to download more than one file at a time, an
enhanced plotting tool, overlays of GSC2, 2MASS, SDSS and FIRST catalogs, user-defined
search lists, and much faster footprints. The HLA project is a collaboration between the
Space Telescope Science Institute, the Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility, and
the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. Read more...
The Space Telescope Science Institute is operated for NASA
by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy.