The Space Telescope Science Institute (ST ScI), operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), directs science operations for the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), which was launched into a near-earth orbit in the spring of 1990. ST ScI is also the home to an active scientific staff of more than one hundred people employed by AURA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Computer Science Corporation (CSC), which is under contract to provide ground support and data analysis facilities.
This year was characterized by a huge effort in preparation for the second HST Servicing Mission (SM2), scheduled for launch on February 13, 1997. In this mission, the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) will replace the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) and the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS). In addition, other parts of the telescope will be replaced or upgraded. These include the installation of a new Solid-State Recorder (SSR) and a refurbished analog tape recorder, and the replacement of the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS-2) by a refurbished one (with improved optics).
The HST observing efficiency has been continuously improving since launch, and it has currently reached 55%, compared to the 33% experienced in the first year of operation.
The deadline for proposals for Cycle 7 of HST observations was on September 13, 1996. About 1300 proposals were received.
Dr. Mike Hauser, who was the Chief of the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), entered the job of Deputy Director at ST ScI on October 2, 1995.
As a part of its contribution to the promotion of scientific interaction, ST ScI hosted during the past year a number of scientific meetings. The topic of the annual ST ScI May Symposium was The Extragalactic Distance Scale. This meeting was held at ST ScI on May 7--10, 1996. Twenty-four invited talks and more than 80 posters were presented during the meeting, which was attended by about 120 participants. Many methods of determining distance, relying typically on knowledge of the luminosity of some objects (``standard candles"), intrinsic physical sizes (geometrical methods), velocities, or other relations between some of the properties of the objects (e.g., the luminosity and velocity) have been described. It was encouraging to note that the differences between the ``high" and ``low" values of the Hubble constant have now been reduced to about 20%.
About 200 participants attended IAU Symposium 179, New Horizons from Wide Field Imaging, on August 26--30, 1996. The Symposium was hosted by ST ScI and The Johns Hopkins University (JHU). The main goal of the meeting was to bring together researchers involved in the various sky surveys (both existing and future ones), across the spectrum, in an attempt to explore the relations between the surveys and astrophysical opportunities, and to build strategies for working with the huge (multiple terabyte) databases associated with the surveys. The proceedings will be edited by Brian McLean and published by Kluwer.
On March 25--27, 1996, the Galaxies Journal Club hosted a mini workshop entitled: The Evolution of Low Luminosity Galaxies and Faint Blue Galaxies. The idea behind the workshop was to combine the knowledge about local low-luminosity galaxies with that on faint blue galaxies seen at moderate redshifts. The talks were organized around three main themes: ``Star Formation Properties/Histories," ``Dynamics, ISM, and Other Physical Processes," and ``Low Luminosity Galaxies---Do They Matter?" The workshop was attended by 55 participants.