CU Professor slated for September 9 NASA briefing for release of new Hubble images

University of Colorado at Boulder Professor James Green will participate in a NASA news briefing in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 9 at 9 a.m. MDT to unveil the first images from the newly refurbished Hubble Space Telescope.

Reporters interested in participating in the NASA press conference should e-mail J.D. Harrington at jd.harrington@nasa.gov with their names, media affiliations and telephone numbers. CU-Boulder faculty members Green, Michael Shull and Cynthia Froning will be available to media following the press briefing to discuss the new Hubble images.

To contact the researchers, reporters should call Shull at 303-492-7827 or e-mail him at Michael.shull@colorado.edu for more information.

Green of CU-Boulder’s astrophysical and planetary sciences department is the principal investigator on an $88 million instrument designed by CU-Boulder that was installed on the orbiting space telescope in May, along with a new wide-field camera. The spectrograph, constructed with industrial partner Ball Aerospace & Technology Corp. of Boulder, was designed to probe the “fossil record” of gases in the early universe for clues to the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and intergalactic gas.

The images will be unveiled by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. The event also includes Senior Research Scientist Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, NASA Associate Administrator Ed Weiler, Bob O’Connell, chair of the science oversight committee for the Wide Field Camera 3 at the University of Virginia and Dave Leckrone, senior project scientist for Hubble at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The telephone-booth-sized instrument known as the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, should help scientists better understand the “cosmic web” of material believed to permeate the universe.  COS is gathering information from ultraviolet light emanating from distant objects, allowing scientists to look back in time and out in space to reconstruct the physical conditions and evolution of the early universe, said Green.

For more information about NASA TV downlinks and streaming video, visit http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.  For more information about CU-Boulder’s role in the Hubble mission, including video, visit http://www.colorado.edu/news/r/b9f5b4dd67642367d7ff52cb23a82340.html.