Several hundred orbits of NASA Hubble Space Telescope time have been
allocated to making the deepest-ever view of the universe, equivalent to
a one-million-second-long photographic exposure.

This historic image takes astronomers to “within a stone’s throw” of the
beginning of the universe, unveiling galaxies that emerged from the end
of the cosmological “dark ages” (the time hydrogen formed, but the first
stars had not ignited), merely 500 million years after the big bang, or
when the universe was 5 percent of its present age.

This field, as observed with Hubble’s two premier cameras, the Advanced
Camera for Surveys (ACS) and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object
Spectrometer (NICMOS), will be unveiled to the news media simultaneously
with the rest of the astronomy community on March 9, 2004. The STScI
will host a Science Writers’ workshop, where images will be presented
for the first time. Top science experts in charge of Hubble’s surveys
will describe this field and put it into context with other deep surveys
accomplished by Hubble. Collectively, these surveys are opening a new
chapter in the history book of the early formation of galaxies in the
universe.

The workshop will run from 8:30am to noon on Tuesday, March 9 in the
STScI Auditorium at 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218.
Following the workshop, reporters are invited to attend a premier
screening of an IMAX featurette at the Maryland Science Center, where
viewers actually fly toward the horizon of the universe through
three-dimensional space filled with thousands of real galaxies imaged in
Hubble’s Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.

To register for the workshop, please e-mail the following information to
Cheryl Gundy (gundy@stsci.edu) by MONDAY, MARCH 2:

your name: _________________________________________________

affiliation: _______________________________________________

postal address: ____________________________________________

phone number: ______________________________________________

fax number: ________________________________________________

are you attending the IMAX screening at MSC? ____yes ____no

Parking information and additional details about the workshop will be
provided when your registration has been received.