FOR RELEASE: 9:00 am (EDT) April 24, 2006

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC06-14

HAPPY SWEET SIXTEEN, HUBBLE TELESCOPE!

To celebrate the Hubble Space Telescope's 16 years of success, the two
space agencies involved in the project, NASA and the European Space
Agency (ESA), are releasing this image of the magnificent starburst
galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). This mosaic image is the sharpest wide-angle
view ever obtained of M82. The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue
disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing
hydrogen blasting out of its central regions. This Advanced Camera for
Surveys observation was made in March 2006. Hubble was launched on
April 24, 1990, aboard the space shuttle Discovery.

Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain
(STScI), and P. Puxley (National Science Foundation)

To see and read more about M82 on the Web, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/14
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0604.html
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2006/14

For more information, contact:
Ray Villard, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.,
(phone) 410-338-4514, (e-mail) or

Lars Lindberg Christensen, Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany, (phone)
011-49-89-3200-6306, (cell phone) 011-49-173-3872-621, (e-mail)
or

Keith Noll, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.,
(phone) 410-338-1828, (e-mail) or

Jay Gallagher, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis., (phone)
608-263-2456, (e-mail)

The Hubble Space Telescope is an international cooperative project
between NASA and the European Space Agency. The Space Telescope Science
Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. The Institute
is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in
Astronomy, Inc., Washington.

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