The impact of Hubble on European astronomy - ESLAB 41

Held at ESTEC from 29 May to 1 June 2007, the 41st ESLAB symposium provided an overview of the Hubble Space Telescope's key contributions to all areas of astronomy and astrophysics. In particular, the impact of the Hubble results on European astronomical research was summarised.

Since the launch of Hubble on 24 April 1990, the Space Telescope's instruments have provided invaluable data to advance research in a broad range of topics, from star- and planet formation to (active) galaxies and cosmology. During the seventeen years of operations, European scientist have continuously succeeded in obtaining more than the minimum guaranteed observing time, resulting in a large number of publications in scientific journals.
The 41st ESLAB symposium was spread over four one-day sessions, each covering particular fields of research:

Session 1 - Stars, star formation, stellar populations and planets

• Monica Tosi - Formation history of resolved stellar populations
• Claude Nicollier - Visiting Hubble in orbit
• Alain Lecavelier - Atmospheres and Evaporation of Extrasolar Planets

Session 2 - Nearby galaxies, bulges, spheroids, galaxy formation

• Tim de Zeeuw - The nature of bulges and spheroids
• Simon Lilly - Galaxy Formation and Evolution
• Piero Madau - Galaxy formation, halo substructure and reionization

Session 3 - Deep fields, AGN, Black holes, radio galaxies

• Gunther Hasinger - Active Galactic Nuclei
• David Axon - Supermassive black holes
• Hans Walter Rix - HST's deep imaging surveys: Watching the Universe evolve

Session 4 - HST, H0 and dark energy

• Michael Hauser - HST & JWST, the present and the future
• Marijn Franx - Evolution of galaxies from mass selected samples

Each session hosted several invited review talks on key topical areas of astronomy and astrophysics, followed by specialised presentations in those areas.

ESA Science & Technology News Release