| Program Number | Principal Investigator | Program Title |
|---|---|---|
| 12472 | Claus Leitherer, Space Telescope Science Institute | CCC - The Cosmic Carbon Conundrum |
| 12568 | Matthew A. Malkan, University of California - Los Angeles | WFC3 Infrared Spectroscopic Parallel Survey WISP: A Survey of Star Formation Across Cosmic Time |
| 12880 | Adam Riess, The Johns Hopkins University | The Hubble Constant: Completing HST's Legacy with WFC3 |
| 12883 | Denis Grodent, Universite de Liege | Unraveling electron acceleration mechanisms in Ganymede's space environment through N-S conjugate imagery of Jupiter's aurora |
| 12903 | Luis C. Ho, Carnegie Institution of Washington | The Evolutionary Link Between Type 2 and Type 1 Quasars |
| 12934 | Clive N. Tadhunter, University of Sheffield | The importance warm outflows in the most rapidly evolving galaxies in the local Universe |
| 12969 | Peter Garnavich, University of Notre Dame | Global Properties Are Not Enough: Probing the Local Environments of Type Ia Supernovae |
| 13294 | Alexander Karim, Universitat Bonn, Argelander Institute for Astronomy | Characterizing the formation of the primordial red sequence |
| 13297 | Giampaolo Piotto, Universita degli Studi di Padova | The HST Legacy Survey of Galactic Globular Clusters: Shedding UV Light on Their Populations and Formation |
| 13307 | Nadia L Zakamska, The Johns Hopkins University | Taking the measure of quasar winds |
| 13309 | Yicheng Guo, University of California - Santa Cruz | UV Snapshot of Low-redshift Massive Star-forming Galaxies: Searching for the Analogs of High-redshift Clumpy Galaxies |
| 13314 | Sanchayeeta Borthakur, The Johns Hopkins University | Characterizing the Elusive Intragroup Medium and Its Role in Galaxy Evolution |
| 13324 | Davor Krajnovic, Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam | Where cores are no more: assessing the role of dissipation in the assembly of early-type galaxies |
| 13328 | Jonathan D. Nichols, University of Leicester | Observing Ganymede's atmosphere and auroras with COS and STIS |
| 13343 | David Wittman, University of California - Davis | Probing Dark Matter with a New Class of Merging Clusters |
| 13344 | Adam Riess, The Johns Hopkins University | A 1% Measurement of the Distance Scale with Perpendicular Spatial Scanning |
| 13346 | Thomas R. Ayres, University of Colorado at Boulder | Advanced Spectral Library II: Hot Stars |
| 13364 | Daniela Calzetti, University of Massachusetts - Amherst | LEGUS: Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey |
| 13366 | Roelof S. de Jong, Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam | The vertical disk structure of spiral galaxies and the origin of their thick disks |
| 13382 | Mary E. Putman, Columbia University in the City of New York | Warm Gas Flows in the Coma Cluster |
| 13411 | Wiphu Rujopakarn, University of Arizona | Dissecting the intensely star-forming clumps in a z ~ 2 Einstein Ring |
| 13423 | Ryan J. Cooke, University of California - Santa Cruz | Primordial lithium in z~0, metal-poor damped Lyman alpha systems |
| 13438 | William B. Sparks, Space Telescope Science Institute | Probing the atmosphere of a transiting ocean world |
| 13445 | Joshua S. Bloom, University of California - Berkeley | Absolute Calibration of the Extragalactic Mira Period-Luminosity Relation |
| 13470 | Julio Chaname, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile | Probing Cold Dark Matter Substructure with Wide Binaries in Dwarf Spheroidal Galaxies |
| 13483 | Goeran Oestlin, Stockholm University | eLARS - extending the Lyman Alpha Reference Sample |
| 13490 | Jason A. Surace, California Institute of Technology | Resolving the Reddest Extragalactic Sources Discovered by Spitzer: Strange Dust-Enshrouded Objects at z~2-3? |
| 13496 | Jennifer Lotz, Space Telescope Science Institute | HST Frontier Fields - Observations of MACSJ0416.1-2403 |
| 13506 | Belinda J. Wilkes, Smithsonian Institution Astrophysical Observatory | Probing dark matter in the luminous radio galaxy 3C220.3 and the structure of the z=2.22 SMG/AGN it is lensing. |
| 13510 | Martin C. Weisskopf, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center | Joint Chandra and HST Monitoring and Studies of the Crab Nebula |
| 13516 | W. Nielsen Brandt, The Pennsylvania State University | The Variable Absorption and Disrupting X-ray Jet of the Broad Absorption Line Radio-Loud Quasar PG 1004+130 |
| 13610 | Jian-Yang Li, Planetary Science Institute | Imaging Comet C/2013 A1 {Siding Spring} to Support Risk Assessment for Mars Orbiters during the Close Mars Encounter |
| 13619 | Lorenz Roth, Southwest Research Institute | Confirmation of Europa's water vapor plume activity |
GO 13364: LEGUS: Legacy ExtraGalactic UV Survey
UGC 4305 = Holmberg II - Arp 268, one of the star-forming galaxies targeted by LEGUS |
Understanding the global architecture of star formation is a key step towards understanding the morphological evolution of galaxies and the characteristics of the underlying stellar populations. HST has devoted extensive resources to observations of nearby galaxies over its lifetime, including detailed surveys of a handful of systems, notably the PHAT survey of M31, with the enhanced imaging capabilities made available following SM4. Most of those programs, however, have focused on optical, far-red and, to a lesser extent, near-infrared wavelengths. While those observations provide high-quality colour-magnitude data that enable an exploration of relatively mature populations, they are less effective at probing active star-formation sites populated by young, high-mass stars. Those regions are most prominent at ultraviolet wavelengths, and the present program aims to capitalise on the past heritage of HST observations vby adding near-UV imaging for 50 nearby galaxies. The 50 targets are drawn from a catalogue of 400 systems within ~11 Mpc of the Milky Way, and have been selected to provide a fair sampling of the wide variety of galactic systems within that volume. The program will image star-forming regions in these systems in near-UV and blue wavelengths using the WFC3 UVIS channel with the F275W, F336W and F438W filters, supplemented by F55W and F81wW (V and IK) where necessary. |
GO 13366: The vertical disk structure of spiral galaxies and the origin of their thick disks
 Ground-based imaging of the edge-on spiral, NGC 891 |
The stars in the Milky Way are generally grouped into stellar populations, building blocks that provide insight into the process of galaxy assembly. The traditional populations are the near-spherical, metal-poor Halo, representing the first significant burst of star formation; the Disk, whose constituents have higher metallicities, a flattened density distribution (which defines the Galactic Plane) and significant angular momentum, suggesting a formation history that includes collapse and dissipation; and the central Bulge, which, with a spheroidal distribution and broad metallicity range, may be something of an amalgam of disk and halo. The original models for the Disk envisaged a relatively simple population, with a continuous star formation history and an exponential density distribution, both radially and perpendicular to the Plane. However, in the mid-1980s, starcount analyses revealed more complexity in the vertical density distribution, with evidence for two components with scaleheights ~300 and 1000-1300 pc. The extended component is clearly old (>9 Gyrs in age). A variety of emchanisms have been proposed for its formation, dubbed the thick disk, including dynamical scattering within the early disk, formation in situ, or perturbations as the result of major or minor mergers. Ground and space-based observations show that other spiral galaxies possess a similar component. Clearly, the frequency of such systems and their age distribution offer clues to the merging history of the average spiral galaxy. The present program will use ACS and WFC3 to image three massive edge-on spirals at several locations perpendicular to the Plane, with the aim of resolving the underlying stellar populations and tracing the metallicity distribution and overall morphology of the extended disk components. |
GO 13438: Probing the atmosphere of a transiting ocean world
An image of europa taken by Voyage 2 in 1979
|
Europa is the smallest, and the most intriguing, of the four Galilean satellites of Jupiter. With a diameter of 3139 km, Europa is almost twice the size of Earth's moon and significantly larger than Mercury. In 1957, Gerard Kuiper commented that both infrared spectroscopy and the optical colours and albedo suggested that Jovian satellite II (Europa) is covered "by H2O snow". Images taken by the Voyager space probes in the late 1970s (see left) reveal a smooth surface, with only a handful of craters larger than a few kilometres. These features are consistent with a relatively young, icy surface. Subsequent detailed investigations by the Galileo satellite strongly suggest that a substantial body of liquid water, heated by tidal friction, underlies a 5 to 50 km thick icy crust. The presence of this subterranean (subglacial?) ocean clearly makes Europa one of the two most interesting astrobiology targets in the Solar System. Most recently, analysis of observations taken by the Space Telescope imaging Spectrograph (STIS) on Hubble indicated the presence of an extended cloud of Lyman-alpha emission near the polar regions while Europa was furthest in its orbit from Jupiter, stongly suggesting that Europa's oceans may be vaporising into space. The present HST program also aims to search for outgassing, but in this by looking for absorption features against the smooth background light of Juptier while Europa is in transit. The prorgam will use STIS in time-tag mode to search from transient features in th far-UV, and use coronagraphy at near-UV wavelengths to look for dust signatures. |
GO 13610: Imaging Comet C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring) to Support Risk Assessment for Mars Orbiters during the Close Mars Encounter
The projected orbit of Comet C/2013 A1 |
2013 has been an interesting year for Hubble and comets: Comet ISON is being tracked as a potential great comet, passing through perihelion in late November; PanSTARRS and other surveys are turning up more evidence of residual cometary activity within objects in the asteroid belt, main belt comets; and an Oort cloud comet discovered in early January is slated to undergo a close encounter with Mars in October next year. The last-named object is Comet 2013/A1 (Siding Spring), originally found by Robert McNaught in the course of the ongoing Siging Spring Survey for near-Earth asteroids and comets. Pre-discovery images have been located among observations by the Pan-STARRS survey and the Catalina Sky survey, and it quickly became apparent that the orbit will take the comet extremely close to Mars in late 2014. More details calculations show that the comet will pass within 134,000 km of the planet. As an Oort comet, potentially on its first pass through the inner Solar System, Comet 2013/A1 is likely to have a substantial component of icy, volatile substances, generating an extensive coma and tail of gas and dust that will envelope the planet and its surrounding. Those dusty materials present a potential hazard for the planetary probes that are either currently in orbit around Mars or (in the case of Maven) slated to arrive there shrtly before the comet. The present program will use HST to obtain imaging observations at there epochs with the aim of characterising the evolution of surface activity and the consequent likelihood of adverse effects on the Martian probes. |