COLLECTION OF HUBBLE IMAGES TO BE EXHIBITED AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

A collection of the finest images taken by the will open April 22, at the National Academy of Sciences, 2100 C Street, NW, Washington, DC.

Photographs in the exhibition, titled "A Universe of Change," range from planets in our cosmic backyard to the primitive at the farthest reaches of space and time. The 26 images in the exhibition carry through the theme of change as a universal and often dramatic natural process.

The exhibit's largest image shows the glowing remnants of an exploded , supernova 1987A, set amid diaphanous veils of gas and dust. Other images display the colorful and intricately drawn rings of gas surrounding dying imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The pillars of the Eagle nebula, perhaps the single best-known Hubble image, is joined by photographs of stellar nurseries, where the next generation of stars is being born. All of the planets except Mercury, too close to the Sun for Hubble to observe, are represented in the exhibition.

Also in the exhibition: the pinwheel-shaped galaxies M100 and NGC253; the Antennae galaxies; Centaurus A; and the , one of the most distant images of the Universe ever obtained. The light shown in this image traveled 10 billion years through space before being recorded by Hubble's camera.

The exhibition was conceived and curated by astronomers Robert A. Brown, director of the Special Studies Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) and Keith Noll, director of the Hubble Heritage Project also at STScI. Image prints were designed and produced by Giles Baker-Smith and David MacIlwaine of BlueSpace Gallery in London, England. Captions were created by science writer Jacqueline Mitton.

The exhibition will be on view at the Academy through August 31, 1999. It is open to the public free of charge from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. Arrangements for weekend viewing may be made by calling 202/334-2436.

The exhibition is sponsored by Arts in the Academy, a public service program of the National Academy of Sciences; the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy; the Space Telescope Science Institute; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Note for REVIEWERS: You are invited to attend a reception opening the exhibition from 5 to 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 22, at the National Academy of Sciences.