NOTE TO EDITORS: N96-2

NEW HUBBLE IMAGES AVAILABLE

Six new images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, released this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in San Antonio, TX, are available to media representatives.

These images are available via the World Wide Web and the Internet at URL:

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/NewsRoom/today.html

or by printed copy by faxing your request on your organization's letterhead to the Headquarters Imaging Branch at 202/358-4333.

The images are:

• The deepest, most detailed optical view of the universe ever obtained, called the Hubble Deep Field (HDF), was assembled from 342 separate exposures taken with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 for ten consecutive days between December 18 and 28, 1995. Representing a narrow "keyhole" view stretching to the visible horizon of the universe, the HDF image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime located 75 feet away. Though the field is a very small sample of the heavens, it is considered representative of the typical distribution of galaxies in space because the universe, statistically, looks largely the same in all directions. Gazing into this small field, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution.

  Color: 96-HC-5 B&W: 96-H-5 (single image)
  Color: 96-HC-2 B&W: 96-H-2 (three views of sample galaxies)

• An image of planetary nebula NGC 7027 shows remarkable new details of the process by which a star like the Sun dies. New features include: faint, blue, concentric shells surrounding the nebula; an extensive network of red dust clouds throughout the bright inner region; and the hot central white dwarf, visible as a white dot at the center. The nebula is a record of the star's final death throes. Initially the ejection of the star's outer layers, when it was at its red giant stage of evolution, occurred at a low rate and was spherical. The photo reveals that the initial ejections occurred episodically to produce the concentric shells.

  Color: 96-HC-4 B&W: 96-H-4

• An image of a warped disk around the star Beta Pictoris may indicate the presence of a planet around the star. The image shows for the first time the inner region of a 200- billion mile diameter dust disk around Beta Pictoris. The disk is slightly warped, and scientists believe that if the warp were there when the star formed it would long since have flattened out, unless it is produced and maintained by the gravitational pull of a planet.

  Color: 96-HC-3 B&W: 96-H-3

• This photo reveals the first direct image of a star other than the Sun. Called Alpha Orionis, or Betelgeuse, it is a red supergiant star marking the shoulder of the winter constellation Orion the Hunter. The image reveals a huge ultraviolet atmosphere with a mysterious hot spot on the stellar behemoth's surface. The enormous bright spot, more than ten times the diameter of Earth, is at least 2,000 Kelvin degrees hotter than the surface of the star. The image suggests that a totally new physical phenomenon may be affecting the atmospheres of some stars.

  Color: 96-HC-11 B&W: 96H-11

• An image of the Egg Nebula, also known as CRL2688 and located roughly 3,000 light-years from us, was taken in red light with the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 aboard NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The image shows a pair of mysterious "searchlight" beams emerging from a hidden star, criss-crossed by numerous bright arcs. This image sheds new light on the poorly understood ejection of stellar matter which accompanies the slow death of Sun-like stars.

  Color: 96-HC-25
  B&W: 96-H-25

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