Donald Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC                 March 24, 1997
(Phone: 202/358-1547)

Tammy Jones
Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD
(Phone: 301/286-5566)

Ray Villard
Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD
(Phone: 410/338-4514)

NOTE TO EDITORS:  N97-22

HUBBLE'S SHARPEST VIEWS OF MARS AVAILABLE

     New, sharpest-ever views of the planet Mars taken by the Wide
Field Planetary Camera-2 (WFPC2) aboard NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope on March 10, 1997 (following the successful STS-82
Hubble second servicing mission), clearly show clouds, polar caps
and other bright and dark markings known to astronomers for more
than a century.  The images were taken just before Mars opposition
-- when the red planet comes closest to the Earth this year (about
60 million miles or 100 million km). Each picture element (pixel)
in WFPC2's Planetary Camera's image spans 13 miles (22 km) on the
Martian surface.

     These images show the planet during the transition between
spring and summer in the northern hemisphere (summer solstice).
The annual north-polar, carbon-dioxide frost (dry ice) cap is
rapidly subliming, revealing the much smaller permanent water-ice
cap, along with a few nearby detached regions of surface frost.

     Hubble is being used to monitor dust storm activity to
support the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter
Missions, which are currently en route to Mars.  Hubble's "weather
report" from these images, is invaluable for Mars Pathfinder,
which is scheduled for a July 4 landing.  These images show no
evidence for large-scale dust storm activity, which plagued a
previous Mars mission in the early 1970s.

     Images are available to news media representatives by calling
202/358-1900. photo numbers are:

Color: Syrtis Major 97-HC-136    Mars at Opposition     97-HC-137

     Image files are also available on the Internet on GIF and
JPEG formats via anonymous ftp from oposite.stsci.edu in /pubinfo

                         GIF                  JPEG
Syrtis Major       gif/marssm97.gif     jpeg/marssm97.jpg
Mars at Opposition gif/marssm97.gif     jpeg/marssm97.jpg

     Higher resolution digital versions (300 dpi JPEG) of the
image are available in /pubinfo/hrtemp: 97- 09a.jpg (color) and
97-09abw.jpg (black and white).

     GIF and JPEG images, captions and information are available
via World Wide Web at:

http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/97/09.html and via links in:
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/latest.html or
http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/pictures.html

                             - end -