Hubble Space Telescope images of asteroid 4 Vesta obtained during the favorable 1996 apparition show an impact crater 460 kilometers in diameter near the south pole. Color measurements within the 13-kilometer-deep crater are consistent with excavation deep into a high-calcium pyroxensrich crust or olivine upper mantle. About 1 percent of Vesta was excavated by the crater formation event, a volume sufficient to account for the family of small Vesta-like asteroids that extends to dynamical source regions for meteorites. This crater may be the site of origin for the howardite, eucrite, and diogenite classes of basaltic achondrite meteorites.

No abstract

No abstract

We present "snapshot" observations with the NearInfrared Camera and MultiObject Spectrometer (NICMOS) on board the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) of 94 nearby galaxies from the Revised Shapley Ames Catalog. Images with 0.2 ′′ resolution were obtained in two filters, a broad-band continuum filter (F160W, roughly equivalent to the H-band) and a narrow band filter centered on the Pa α line (F187N or F190N, depending on the galaxy redshift) with the 51 ′′ ×51 ′′ field of view of the NICMOS camera 3. A firstorder continuum subtraction is performed, and the resulting line maps and integrated Pa α line fluxes are presented. A statistical analysis indicates that the average Pa α surface brightness in the central regions is highest in early-type (Sa-Sb) spirals.

No abstract