Don Savage
Headquarters, Washington, DC          January 17, 1996
(Phone:  202/358-1547)

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

                          - end -

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