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For the latest on the Hubble servicing mission, please visit NASA's Servicing Mission 4 web site.
Latest News
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A Celestial Landscape in Celebration of 10 Years of Stunning Hubble Heritage Images |
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The landmark 10th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's Hubble Heritage Project is being celebrated with a 'landscape' image from the cosmos. Cutting across a nearby star-forming region, called NGC 3324, are the "hills and valleys" of gas and dust displayed in intricate detail. Set amid a backdrop of soft, glowing blue light are wispy tendrils of gas as well as dark trunks of dust that are light-years in height. NGC 3324 is located in the constellation Carina, about 7,200 light-years away from Earth. This image is a composite of data taken with two of Hubble's science instruments. Data taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) in 2006 isolated light emitted by hydrogen. More recent data, taken in 2008 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), isolated light emitted by sulfur and oxygen gas. To create a color composite, the data from the sulfur filter are represented by red, from the oxygen filter by blue, and from the hydrogen filter by green. |
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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...
2009 Hubble and Giacconi Fellowship Competitions
NASA and STScI are pleased to offer opportunities for postdoctoral research in the fields
of astronomy, astrophysics, or planetary science. The Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship offers
scientists support for research broadly related to NASA's Cosmic Origins program. The
Giacconi Fellowship, named in honor of the first director of STScI and Nobel Prize winner
Riccardo Giacconi, provides up to three years of support for outstanding postdoctoral
researchers in any field of astronomy, astrophysics, or planetary science. Both
programs are now accepting applicants for 2009 awards.
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.