An HST/ACS survey of early-type galaxies in the Virgo cluster

One hundred early-type members of the Virgo Cluster have been observed with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) as part of the ACS Virgo Cluster Survey. The survey and its extensions consists of F475W and F850LP imaging from the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), supplemented by additional imaging and spectroscopy from WFPC2 HST, Chandra, Spitzer, Keck, KPNO, and CTIO. In this article, I report briefly on four scientific highlights from the program: (1) the discovery of a population of probable ultra-compact dwarf galaxies; (2) an improved measurement of the frequency of compact stellar nuclei in early-type galaxies; (3) a precise new measurement of Virgo's line-of-sight depth; and (4) new insights into the chemical evolution of galaxies from the color distributions of their globular cluster systems.