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Session 67 - Hubble Space Telescope: From the Interstellar Medium to Massive Black Holes.
Invited session, Thursday, January 08
International Ballroom Center,
The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) is a versatile, long-slit spectrograph that exploits the angular resolution, optical/UV wavelength coverage, and darker sky of the HST. The wavelength coverage is 115-1000 nm in four bands; spectral resolving powers range from 26 to 200,000. The MAMA and CCD 2-dimensional detectors provide order-of-magnitude improvements over the first generation spectrographs. On-orbit verification and early science observations show that the instrument is performing very well.
Three science vignettes demonstrate the capabilities of STIS:
\bullet The blast wave is interacting with the circumstellar ejecta of the precursor of SN 1987A.
\bullet High resolution, high S/N UV spectroscopy of a hot star background probe reveals physical conditions in complex regions of the interstellar medium.
\bullet Long-slit spectra through the nuclei of nearby galaxies confirm the presence and action of supermassive black holes.
