TITLE:   GCN GRB OBSERVATION REPORT
NUMBER:  246
SUBJECT: GRB 990123: Publicly available reduced HST images
DATE:    99/02/03 15:47:41 GMT
FROM:    Andrew S. Fruchter at STScI  <fruchter@stsci.edu>

Andrew Fruchter, on behalf of the HST GRB Collaboration, reports:

As the Director of STScI, Steven Beckwith, has announced in GCN 245,
service observations of GRB 990123 by HST using the STIS CCD will be 
released to the community immediately upon their having been 
processed through the standard HST data pipeline and fully ingested 
by the HST Archive.   However, the standard data pipeline will 
not combine the 6 separate dither pointings, nor do a complete removal 
of the hot pixels and cosmic rays.  

Therefore, because of the great community interest in these
observations, the HST GRB Collaboration (whose time begins again
with Cycle 8) plans to fully reduce the data, and make the resulting 
FITS images publicly available to the community via the web within 
a day of the release of the data by the HST Archive (the wait may 
be significantly less, depending upon the timing of the release
of the data from the archive).   A GCN containing information on how 
to retrieve the fully reduced images will be sent as soon as they are 
available.