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Latest News
Around The InstituteWebb Telescope Approved for Development/LaunchOn 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 4Hubble 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 StarsHow 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 ObservationsWe 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... |
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