13 Oct 2003 10:44

Proceedings of two conferences organised by the ISO Data Centre have been issued: Exploiting the ISO Data Archive (SP-511) and the Calibration Legacy of ISO (SP-481).

Science Highlights

An ESA press release was issued on the occasion of ISO passing the milestone of 1000 refereed papers published. The overall publication rate continues to be good, with ISO papers covering all areas of astronomy. Recent results include:

• The deepest survey by ISO (6 µJy at 6.7 µm)
  
  In the SSA13 field, a flux limit three times fainter than those in the Hubble Deep Fields at the same wavelength has been reported. 65 sources were detected down to 6 µJy in the 16 arcmin 2 field. Integrating individual sources in this flux range, the resolved fraction of the extragalactic background light at 6.7 µm is estimated to be 0.56 nW m^-2sr ^-1 . The result is in agreement with the gravitational lensing result by Metcalfe et al. (2003) who reported the deepest 15 um result, and in fairly good agreement with a model prediction by Franceschini et al. (1997).

• The first detection of a pure rotational transition of 17 OH in the Interstellar Medium
  
  Two resolved components of this transition appear in absorption towards the giant molecular cloud Sagittarius B2, which was observed at a spectral resolution of 33 kms^-1 with the Fabry-Pérot mode of the ISO Long Wavelength Spectrometer.