Welcome Home, Sam!

     A welcome home reception for Sam Durrance and scientists on
the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope team will be held from 3 to 5
p.m. Tuesday, April 25, in the Schafler Auditorium at the
Bloomberg Center for Physics and Astronomy, on the Homewood
campus.

     The reception is free and open to the public. Refreshments
will be served.

     Dr. Durrance, a Hopkins astrophysicist, was on the space
shuttle Endeavour during the historic 16 and a half day Astro-2
mission. As a payload specialist, he operated Astro-2's three
ultraviolet telescopes, one of which was HUT, designed and built
by scientists at Hopkins and the Applied Physics Laboratory.

     He will talk about the space observatory and present slides
and a video taken during the mission.

     Astrophysicist Arthur Davidsen, a professor in the
Department of Physics and Astronomy, also will discuss the
mission. Dr. Davidsen headed the HUT project and conceived of the
idea in the late 1970s.

     Endeavour returned to Earth on March 18. Scientists are now
analyzing the large amount of data they collected with HUT and
will publish their findings in the years to come. 

     A special session for Astro-2 research has been scheduled
for a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in June.