VOL 24 ISSUE 03 Space Telescope Science Institute Interacting Galaxy Pair Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) http://Hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2007/36/ SKY IN GOO G LE EARTH C. Christian, [email protected], and A. Conti, [email protected] fter spending hours roaming our home planet via GOO G LE EARTH , it a “basemap.” SKY also contains stick figures of constellations, labeling just seemed natural to wonder if we might ramble through the SKY of selected objects from astronomical catalogues, Hubble press-release in the same manner. Although we arrived by different paths, we images with explanations, and other features, such as tours. A found we shared that same vision. By late 2005, we were collaborating in Each tour is a sequence of locations linked by some theme that you have an experiment to use the technology of GOO G LE EARTH as an interface to the downloaded into your Places in GOO G LE EARTH /SKY. For example, a tour of universe of astronomical data and information. some interesting Hubble images can be downloaded from the gSKY website. We had an opportunity to give a “Tech Talk” at the Googleplex in Mountain Detailed instructions about all aspects of using GOO G LE EARTH and SKY are View, California, where we introduced googlers to the treasure trove of found at the GOO G LE EARTH website: http://earth.google.com/userguide/. 2007 Hubble data and the standards and protocols of astronomical archives. The Hubble press-release images were embedded in SKY only after going Members of the GOO G LE EARTH team were intrigued by the possibilities and through a painstaking process of checking and adjusting their alignments enthusiastic about our modest experimentation with their technology. on the basemap. To make this process even more complicated, the In August 2007, our dream became a reality with the release of SKY IN basemap is constructed from a projection involving the Earth’s geometry GOO G LE EARTH , a feature incorporated in GOO G LE EARTH version 4.2, which and coordinate system. The explanations are from the original press allows the user to begin roaming the sky with a click of a button (http:// releases by the Office of Public Outreach; each is linked to the object’s earth.google.com). pages at the Astronomical Data System, SIMBAD , and The data in the Digitized Sky Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey the NASA/IPAC EXTRA G ALACTIC ATABA S E D . All the press- Continued FALL forms the foundation of SKY. Colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh release images are tagged to conform to the Virtual page 3 and the Google Pittsburgh facility processed and merged this data into Astronomy Multimedia Project recommendations DIRECTOR’S PERSPECTIVE Possible Multi-Cycle Treasury Program M. Mountain, [email protected] f everything goes according to plan, next August the Kennedy Space Center will host a spectacular sight: two space shuttles, poised on adjacent launch pads, ready to go into space. Atlantis will be heading to the Hubble Space Telescope for the last servicing mission; Endeavor will be prepared, if necessary, to rescue the crew of the Atlantis. This dramatic display of strategic assets Iwill testify to NASA’s commitment to space science. The primary goal of Servicing Mission 4 (SM4) is to maximize the Great Observatory Origins Deep Survey and the Cosmic Evolution Survey. scientific return from Hubble over the following five years. There is little question that complementary and supplementary programs Here at the Space Telescope Science Institute, we have the responsibility using WFC3 will be proposed in Cycle 17. to ensure that the science flowing from the newly refurbished Hubble fully In another example, the panchromatic capabilities of WFC3 and ACS justifies the incredible investment the nation, NASA, and the astronaut offer the potential of mapping the star-formation properties in nearby corps are making in this last servicing mission. Thus, we are inviting input galaxies (such as M33), perhaps coupled with metallicity and kinematic from the community about a possible new class of very large observing analyses using observations by COS and STIS. programs following SM4. As yet another—STIS, COS, and perhaps even the FGS might feature After SM4, Hubble will have new gyros, batteries, and more powerful strongly in concerted investigations of the characteristics of transiting instrumentation than ever before in its history. The Wide Field Camera 3 (and non-transiting) extrasolar planets. (WFC3) and Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) will be installed. If all These are just some areas that might profit from very large allocations goes well, we will also have a new Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS) and a of Hubble time. In order to assess the appetite of the community for such repaired Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). NASA is even programs, we are soliciting white papers that describe projects in this exploring how to repair the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which category. This solicitation in no way pre-selects or restricts the science topics. was Hubble’s imaging workhorse until it died in late January 2007. Not You may submit ideas for any combination of imaging and spectroscopy. until Webb flies in 2013 will the community have access to so powerful a If you are opposed to the establishment of this type of program, you space observatory as the refurbished Hubble will be after SM4. may also submit a white paper outlining your concerns. For example, you So how should we allocate time after this last visit to Hubble? What could describe the science that you envision being adversely impacted, or programs should we contemplate? Are our current modes of operation advocate a greater overall allocation to small and medium programs. sufficient, or are there science questions that demand greater resources? If, and only if, we find really compelling ideas for a new Multi-Cycle As one example, Hubble has devoted extensive resources to probing Treasury (MCT) program, we anticipate allocating 2,000 orbits— the high-redshift universe through deep-imaging surveys on a variety of distributed over the last few months of Cycle 17 (150 to 200 orbits) and scales, from the Hubble Deep Field and the Ultra Deep Field through the through Cycles 18 and 19—to this category. Up to 600 orbits would be 2 DIRECTOR’S PERSPECTIVE subsidized from director’s discretionary time. The remaining orbits (up to 1200) would be taken from the General Observer allocations in Cycles 18 and 19, drawn predominantly from the time currently set aside for large and Treasury programs. MCT programs should, therefore, have relatively little impact on the number of small and medium programs allocated in those cycles, and there will still be an opportunity to apply for standard large and Treasury programs. By this time next year, if all goes well, we will be entering a new era of space science capabilities with the post-SM4 Hubble. We are looking to the science community to make this a new era of discovery. W Figure 1: Astronauts training to fix The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL). SKY IN GOO G LE EARTH from page 1 and vetted by the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (http://www.communicatingastronomy. org/repository). Within minutes of the SKY release, a new community blossomed with comments, speculations, and additions. This delighted us, because SKY is intended to be an organic, growing technology for professionals, amateurs, and novices to use—where they all can contribute and collaborate. Many professional astronomers have jumped at the opportunity to share data, including stars with exoplanets from Geoff Marcy, overlays of the constellations from the Naval Observatory and the Institute, and the sky as seen by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite contributed by the University of Washington. We are continuing to work on new features for SKY Figure 1: SKY IN GOO G LE EARTH showing constellation stick figures, locations related to Hubble data, such as catalogs, links to the of Hubble images (the blue symbols) and the main features of the viewport, Hubble Legacy Archive, the Multimission Archive at including the navigation control in the upper right. The left menus are the search Space Telescope, and the National Virtual Observatory. feature, the folders of resources the user has downloaded (middle section) and We have already released a layer of Galaxy Evolution the resources that are downloaded automatically with SKY (lower left section). Explorer images, a tour of the most popular Hubble images as described above, and a file that shows the location of Hubble and its orbit that can be downloaded from the gSky webpage http://Hubblesite. org/explore_astronomy/gSKY/. Orbits and positions for other satellites will be available on that site and viewable in both GOO G LE EARTH and SKY. Continued The purpose of the gSky page is to make it easier for anyone—public page 4 users, educators, students, amateurs, and professional astronomers—to 3 Figure 3: The tour of great HST images. Figure 2: A portion of SKY showing part of the constellation Orion, including Download from the gSKY website: http:// the constellation stick figure, the classic constellation drawing contributed Hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/gSKY /, by a SKY user, and the location of the Hubble mosiac entitled “Fire and Fury open in the SKY mode of GOO G LE EARTH . Click on of Stellar Birth.” Clicking on the blue HubbleSite symbol allows the user “STScI’s Best of Hubble” under Places, and then hit to zoom in to see the high-resolution Hubble Orion image. the play button. Figure 5: Hubble Space Telescope position, its orbit and an information “balloon” regarding the satellite.