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...