Editorial
For astronomers, summer is usually a time to pause, reflect and recharge. It is a temporary reprieve from the academic commitments. Time to catch up with the latest scientific results and plan the year ahead, to start new projects.
For some of you, summer is taking a new direction. Hubble time allocation notification letters for Cycle 22 were sent out at the end of June, and now you are hard at work planning your detailed observations. Exciting!
These letters and the decisions they hold were the result of a week-long deliberation involving more than 150 astronomers worldwide. An exhausting but inspiring process that, year after year, has been crafting the scientific legacy of this powerful observatory.
In the meantime, our schedulers are making sure that the Hubble calendar is packed, executing observation after observation, eager to complete the Cycle 21 programme to make space for yet another year of amazing science and exciting discoveries.
As we start contemplating the 25th anniversary of Hubble’s launch, we rejoice that the observatory is doing so well as it approaches its quarter century, with all instruments continuing to perform flawlessly. In parallel, the James Webb Space Telescope is making giant leaps towards a 2018 launch date, and the idea is starting to take root that yes, we might be so fortunate as to have the two observatories overlapping for 1–2 years in orbit. To highlight this aim Hubble 2020 will be the focus of next year’s STScI symposium on 20–23 April, 2015. Save the date!
We want to engage all of you in defining the remaining years of Hubble’s scientific life and to start thinking of how best to utilise the two observatories together. And of course, we want all of you involved in the biggest observatory birthday celebration ever, when Hubble turns 25! The next newsletter will unveil our plans for the anniversary, and we want you to be a part of it, so stay tuned!
Antonella Nota
ESA HST Project Scientist/STScI Baltimore
Email: HubbleNewsEurope@stsci.edu
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29 July 2014: On 1 July 2014, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope completed deep imaging of the galaxy cluster Abell 2744 (above left) and a nearby "blank" field (above right), as part of the Frontier Fields programme.
The blank field image is nearly as deep as the Ultra Deep Field, and the cluster image peers even ...
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29 July 2014: The symposium “Hubble 2020: Building on 25 years of Discovery” will mark the 25th anniversary of the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This symposium will be held at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore on 20–23 April 2015.
With an eye towards the future, this symposium will celebrate the extraordinary impact that the Hubble ...
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29 July 2014: The Cycle 22 Hubble time allocation process has just concluded, with the eagerly awaited Cycle 22 notification letters appearing through Hubble users' letterboxes in the last week of June.
For those who have been successful, this marks the beginning of new and exciting times, planning new observations, collecting beautiful data, publishing new results and making new discoveries.
Allocation statistics
The ...
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