Stellar film shows what’s involved in an engineering marvel.
Courtesy of hubblesite.com
4…3…2…1, we have liftoff!
Galaxies rush past you at a ridiculous speed; clusters of stars are reduced to miniscule dots. Hubble in the IMAX format at the Denver Museum of nature and science was very captivating. Thanks to the powerful sound system involved in IMAX films, I was able to feel the launch of the shuttles as they rocketed toward space. The view of stars whizzing by and moving towards a single universe is incredible, especially since the screen fills a viewer’s field of vision. Thanks to the technology in the Hubble space telescope, scientists can now get a close look at distant planets, marvelously illustrated by a dive into a section of Orion’s belt which revealed a “star nursery,” several galaxies centered around a sun so large that its waves produce winds that shape the canyon of clouds around them and the nearby galaxies have created a shield to protect themselves. Seeing and moving through brilliant clouds of stars is, frankly, awesome.
The substance of Hubble is about the missions to repair it. Like most inventions of mankind, the Hubble Space Telescope is flawed. After Hubble’s launch, the mirror was incorrectly shaped, a problem that wasn’t fixed for three years. The next mission improved its ability to focus on distant objects. The third mission upgraded the power unit, a key component on an object that relies on solar power, and added an advanced camera. The film follows the astronauts on the fourth mission to repair Hubble. This time, Hubble needs some new gyroscopes, a better circuit board, and better batteries. Each astronaut is a well-trained professional, and when they’re on the screen, they are really friendly. When one of his crew-mates who was holding the camera asked him about why he had sunglasses on his head in the shuttle, astronaut Andrew J. Feustel flipped them over his eyes and said, “Because they’re cool,” with a grin.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s soft voice is a nice addition. It isn’t any louder than it should be, compared with the excellent music score that goes with the spacewalks (a term for simply being in outer space in a suit, no walking necessary). In fact, if it wasn’t announced at the beginning of the movie in such a memorable way, members of the audience wouldn’t know it was DiCaprio. In the opening credits, the titles exploded into several fragments of light, flying away from the center of the screen in a way not unlike a common screensaver. Most of the sound in Hubble is performed by an orchestra, an inclusion I thought was great. At times, I recalled scenes from the Metroid video game series, where an interstellar bounty hunter is on various missions taking her to distant planets where the music is very dynamic, changing with each world and voyage. Reflecting upon it more, I am also reminded of the beginning of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where the openness of space is exemplified through long and echoing notes and is also well narrated.
Being able to see distant and large clusters of galaxies and stars had given me a feeling of insignificance. The only life that we can recognize is on our earth, and now that we have an instrument capable of revealing so many new worlds, perhaps we aren’t the only ones who can see into space. The known universe is so massive and has so much potential to harbor life other than that with which we are familiar. The odds of the outcomes of every event that brought people to dominate the earth are so incredible. Is it too difficult to think that such odds might be tipped in the favor of other beings? There have been volumes upon volumes written on the subject, and honestly a good amount of that is science fiction, but that does drive one to wonder.
Hubble was quite an eye-opener. In a timeframe that might be better suited for a television documentary, it managed to keep my interest with a mixture of relaxing and thrilling moments. For the low price of a six dollar student admission to an IMAX movie at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, I gained a change in perspective and learned a lot about a piece of monumental technology I previously regarded as ‘a thing that takes pictures of space for textbooks.’ I highly recommend Hubble to anyone who has wondered what lies beyond an earthly gaze, and what goes on during a space repair mission.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
