FOR RELEASE: 6:00 am (EST) February 28, 2006

PHOTO NO.: STScI-PRC06-10a

HUBBLE'S LARGEST GALAXY PORTRAIT OFFERS A NEW HIGH-DEFINITION VIEW

Giant galaxies weren't assembled in a day. Neither was this Hubble Space
Telescope image of the face-on spiral galaxy Messier 101 (M101). It is
the largest and most detailed photo of a spiral galaxy that has ever
been released from Hubble. The galaxy's portrait is actually composed of
51 individual exposures taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys
and the Wide Field and planetary Camera 2 in March 1994, September 1994,
June 1999, November 2002, and January 2003. The newly composed image
also includes elements from images from ground-based photos. The final
composite image measures a whopping 16,000 by 12,000 pixels.

Credit for the Hubble image: NASA and ESA

Acknowledgment: K.D. Kuntz (GSFC), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii),
J. Trauger (JPL), J. Mould (NOAO), and Y.-H. Chu (University of
Illinois, Urbana)

Credit for the CFHT image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/
J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum
Credit for the NOAO image: G. Jacoby, B. Bohannan, M. Hanna/
NOAO/AURA/NSF

To see and read more about M101 on the Web, visit:

http://hubblesite.org/news/2006/10
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2006/10
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0602.html

For more information, please contact:

K.D. Kuntz, Goddard Space Flight Center, Baltimore, Md.,
(phone) 301-286-1301, (e-mail) kuntz@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov or

Ray Villard, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.,
(phone) 410-338-4514, (e-mail) villard@stsci.edu or

Soren Larsen, ESA/Space Telescope European Coordinating Facility,
European Southern Observatory, Garching, Germany,
(phone) 011+4989-3200-6576, (e-mail) slarsen@eso.org or

Lars Lindberg Christensen, Hubble/ESA, Garching, Germany,
(phone) 011+49-89-3200-6306, (cell phone) 011+49-173-3872-621,
(e-mail) lars@eso.org

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation
between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore conducts Hubble science operations. The
Institute is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for
Research in Astronomy, Inc., Washington.