Take a number of the Hubble Space Telescope's most stunning images, give them a 3D look, and display them on an IMAX screen--what's not to love? Yet Hubble 3D, an IMAX and Warner Brothers film made in cooperation with NASA, manages to go far beyond that.
Much of the film focuses on last May's mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) to repair the Hubble. The astronauts brought an IMAX 3D camera with which they were able to capture spectacular sequences of the grueling and dangerous spacewalks the crew undertook to conduct the repairs. Coupled with stunning views of Earth, this section of Hubble 3D provides an immersive experience that astronauts who have seen the video have termed the closest thing yet to actually being in orbit. Hubble 3D will open in selected IMAX theaters March 19, but we were fortunate enough to get a preview this week.
The movie, narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, opens with the STS-125 crew suiting up and talking about the importance of the mission and their growing excitement about it in the hours before liftoff. Among them is Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike), who on that mission became the first astronaut to tweet from space. The film cuts away to a history of Hubble and a tour of its images but always returns to the saga of the repair mission.
To master the exacting repairs required to restore the Hubble, the astronauts trained in a huge underwater tank that simulates a zero-gravity environment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. For this mission, they trained with full-scale mockups of both the Space Station and the Hubble--and a replica of the IMAX camera, to help determine what activities would make the best shots for the film. The astronauts were trained to use the IMAX and other cameras, both still and video, to be used on the mission; they completed an 8-month course in basic cinematography.
The STS-125 mission almost didn't happen. NASA had slated its fifth and final Hubble repair mission, but it was canceled on safety grounds in the wake of the Columbia disaster in 2003. (To reach Hubble, the Shuttle must be launched into a higher than normal orbit, increasing its risk of being hit by space junk.) After much public discussion, the mission was reinstated, with one contingency--in case the crew needed to be rescued, a second Shuttle stood at the ready on another launch pad. (To move from a crippled shuttle to the rescue one, the astronauts would have had to shimmy along the Shuttle's mechanical arm.)
Fortunately, the launch went off without a hitch; a few days later, the astronauts rendezvoused with Hubble, where mission specialist Megan McArthur used the Shuttle's mechanical arm to grapple the Hubble and bring it into the payload bay. Then came the five spacewalks needed to fix Hubble. Typically, one astronaut is perched on the mechanical arm and can hold on to heavy equipment, while the other is more mobile.
In repairing the Hubble, the astronauts dealt with balky bolts, even at one point having to break off the handle of a protective plate when the final bolt holding it in place wouldn't come loose. The astronauts were faced with the constant risk of losing a tool (having it float off into space), bumping into and damaging components essential to the Hubble's operation, or worse, ripping their own protective suit. Vivid footage of the snagging of Hubble, and the spacewalks (and it is footage: the IMAX camera uses film), is captured in 3D.
The film includes a pictorial history of Hubble, from its launch in 1990 to the first repair mission in 1993--the application of “contact lenses" to compensate for a defect in the shaping of the telescope's mirror that had caused images to be blurred--and the two other repair missions that preceded STS-125. The narrator talks about the groundbreaking nature of the Hubble Space Telescope, noting that many consider it the greatest scientific achievement since Galileo's first telescope as it's revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos.
Naturally, there's a tour of Hubble's images. Among those shown are auroras at Saturn's pole; a pair of interacting galaxies known as “the Mice"; the swarm of stars at the heart of a globular cluster; misshapen galaxies from near the dawn of our universe; and two star-forming nebulae, the “Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula and the Orion Nebula. For the latter, we were taken on a virtual ride into the nebula's gas clouds, racked by winds streaming from very bright, hot stars, to see close-ups of the protostars, infant stars veiled in dust.
The most tantalizing images, though, weren't taken with Hubble at all but were shot by the Space Shuttle crew: the views of our own planet, its seas, continents, clouds, forests. From the beginning of the Space Age, astronauts have spoken of the indescribable beauty of Earth as seen from this vantage; more than one has wished that all people could get to see it. Hubble 3D comes as close as any film has to granting this. It made me feel like I had actually seen our world through astronaut eyes, and it instilled in me the desire to somehow find a way to experience it in person, improbable as that may be.
Much of the film focuses on last May's mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis (STS-125) to repair the Hubble. The astronauts brought an IMAX 3D camera with which they were able to capture spectacular sequences of the grueling and dangerous spacewalks the crew undertook to conduct the repairs. Coupled with stunning views of Earth, this section of Hubble 3D provides an immersive experience that astronauts who have seen the video have termed the closest thing yet to actually being in orbit. Hubble 3D will open in selected IMAX theaters March 19, but we were fortunate enough to get a preview this week.
The movie, narrated by Leonardo Dicaprio, opens with the STS-125 crew suiting up and talking about the importance of the mission and their growing excitement about it in the hours before liftoff. Among them is Mike Massimino (@Astro_Mike), who on that mission became the first astronaut to tweet from space. The film cuts away to a history of Hubble and a tour of its images but always returns to the saga of the repair mission.
To master the exacting repairs required to restore the Hubble, the astronauts trained in a huge underwater tank that simulates a zero-gravity environment at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. For this mission, they trained with full-scale mockups of both the Space Station and the Hubble--and a replica of the IMAX camera, to help determine what activities would make the best shots for the film. The astronauts were trained to use the IMAX and other cameras, both still and video, to be used on the mission; they completed an 8-month course in basic cinematography.
The STS-125 mission almost didn't happen. NASA had slated its fifth and final Hubble repair mission, but it was canceled on safety grounds in the wake of the Columbia disaster in 2003. (To reach Hubble, the Shuttle must be launched into a higher than normal orbit, increasing its risk of being hit by space junk.) After much public discussion, the mission was reinstated, with one contingency--in case the crew needed to be rescued, a second Shuttle stood at the ready on another launch pad. (To move from a crippled shuttle to the rescue one, the astronauts would have had to shimmy along the Shuttle's mechanical arm.)
Fortunately, the launch went off without a hitch; a few days later, the astronauts rendezvoused with Hubble, where mission specialist Megan McArthur used the Shuttle's mechanical arm to grapple the Hubble and bring it into the payload bay. Then came the five spacewalks needed to fix Hubble. Typically, one astronaut is perched on the mechanical arm and can hold on to heavy equipment, while the other is more mobile.
In repairing the Hubble, the astronauts dealt with balky bolts, even at one point having to break off the handle of a protective plate when the final bolt holding it in place wouldn't come loose. The astronauts were faced with the constant risk of losing a tool (having it float off into space), bumping into and damaging components essential to the Hubble's operation, or worse, ripping their own protective suit. Vivid footage of the snagging of Hubble, and the spacewalks (and it is footage: the IMAX camera uses film), is captured in 3D.
The film includes a pictorial history of Hubble, from its launch in 1990 to the first repair mission in 1993--the application of “contact lenses" to compensate for a defect in the shaping of the telescope's mirror that had caused images to be blurred--and the two other repair missions that preceded STS-125. The narrator talks about the groundbreaking nature of the Hubble Space Telescope, noting that many consider it the greatest scientific achievement since Galileo's first telescope as it's revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos.
Naturally, there's a tour of Hubble's images. Among those shown are auroras at Saturn's pole; a pair of interacting galaxies known as “the Mice"; the swarm of stars at the heart of a globular cluster; misshapen galaxies from near the dawn of our universe; and two star-forming nebulae, the “Pillars of Creation" in the Eagle Nebula and the Orion Nebula. For the latter, we were taken on a virtual ride into the nebula's gas clouds, racked by winds streaming from very bright, hot stars, to see close-ups of the protostars, infant stars veiled in dust.
The most tantalizing images, though, weren't taken with Hubble at all but were shot by the Space Shuttle crew: the views of our own planet, its seas, continents, clouds, forests. From the beginning of the Space Age, astronauts have spoken of the indescribable beauty of Earth as seen from this vantage; more than one has wished that all people could get to see it. Hubble 3D comes as close as any film has to granting this. It made me feel like I had actually seen our world through astronaut eyes, and it instilled in me the desire to somehow find a way to experience it in person, improbable as that may be.
