Announcements

19 July 2013: We are pleased to informally announce the fourth conference in the series “Science with the Hubble Space Telescope”, to be held at the prestigious Accademia dei Lincei in Rome from 17–20 March 2014. Antonella Nota (ESA & STScI) and Roger Davies (Oxford) will co-Chair the Scientific Organising Committee. The conference will be sponsored by ESA, in collaboration with NASA and other partner organisations, and is designed to highlight the scientific breakthroughs made by the Hubble Space Telescope during its two decades of operation, with special emphasis on European contributions. We have three specific goals for this meeting, which is subtitled “Looking to the Future”: to share the latest results from Hubble across the broad canvas of astronomy, to inspire the community of Hubble users to think how Hubble’s successor — the James Webb Space Telescope — will move their scientific field forward, and to look yet further into the future, …

16 July 2013: The Space Telescope Users Committee (STUC) meets at STScI twice a year. This committee is composed of community representatives, who serve and advise on Hubble Space Telescope operations from the users’ perspective, recommending changes and improvements to instrumentation and procedures in order to maximise the scientific performance and productivity of the observatory. Because Hubble is a NASA/ESA partnership, the European astronomical community is also represented on the STUC. There are currently three ESA representatives on this committee: David Sing (Exeter), Giampaolo Piotto (INAF Padova), and Annette Ferguson (Edinburgh), who has recently become Chair. STUC members are interested in ensuring that the broader community is aware of the continuing success of the HST mission, the high level of scientific output, and the increasing demand for telescope time, even 23 years into the mission's lifetime. Europe-based astronomers have enjoyed much success in winning telescope time over the years, and have played a crucial …

16 July 2013: In exchange for ESA’s contributions to the Hubble mission, users from ESA member countries have guaranteed access to 15% of Hubble’s observing time over the lifetime of the mission. The time is allocated via a peer review system where a Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC) evaluates the scientific merits of the proposals received for each cycle, and makes their recommendations to the STScI Director.The TAC met at STScI during the week of 13–18 May 2013. 137 astronomers from all over the world, 25 of whom were from ESA member states, met to evaluate and rank the 1094 proposals received this cycle, Cycle 21 (the highest number since Servicing Mission 4). Proposal pressure was extremely high, with an oversubscription of approximately 6:1.ESA member state scientists were successful as PIs on 22.9% of the accepted proposals and obtained 17.7% of the primary orbits allocated. The total number of ESA member state investigators involved …

16 July 2013: As a European Hubble user, you can access ESA/Hubble’s resources to promote your work to the media and the general public. ESA/Hubble can help by producing and distributing press releases, image processing, web articles, artists’ impressions, and high-definition video. We can also feature your work on the Hubblecast, the world’s most popular science video podcast. ESA/Hubble science writers and image processing experts work closely with scientists while preparing releases, ensuring scientific accuracy. You can see examples of ESA/Hubble press products at www.spacetelescope.org. As well as being a key part of the Hubble mission, education and public outreach work can also have benefits for you, your field of research and your institution. If you think any part of your research could be of interest to the public at large, or your observations might produce an image suitable for public release, please contact Georgia Bladon (email: gbladon@partner.eso.org) so we can explore possible …