I attended a talk by Mario Livio (of the Space Telescope Science Institute) today. He showed the usual Hubble images of the Eagle Nebula and the Whirlpool Nebula while saying that new and even more spectacular images of these are going to be released around April 25. "I could show them to you now, but then I'd have to kill you!"

I wonder if this is a way of campaigning for a Hubble servicing mission.

__________________
Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Those targets for the Hubble Heritage program have been in the works for a good while, but they sure won't hurt in keeping the issue alive.

I had a chance to see a reduced-resolution part of a little piece of one of them after the last proposal deadline - COOOOOL.

Yeah, these new images are probably from the ACS, which has a wider field of view and can go deeper than WFPC2, so the new images are bound to be spectacular.

April 26 is the 15-year anniversary of HST's launch.

ESA is also planning some release material to commemorate this as well.

Hubble launched on the 24th, not the 26th. :wink:

Yes, you're right -- I was typing in the dark and hit 6 instead of 4.

(edited to fix date)