Magnificent Desolation

You might remember that last year, I blogged a photo of the final repairs being made to the Hubble Space telescope.  About a month ago, we went to see the Hubble 3D film about that repair mission.  I meant to write a blog post about how fantastic the film was, how much it helped put the size of our universe in perspective, and how heavily it features the work done by Billy's coworkers at the Space Telescope Science Institute... but then I got super busy with my end-of-semester projects, and I forgot.  But I cannot encourage you strongly enough to check out this film if it's still available in your neck of the woods.  If you go to the film's website you can locate a theater near you.

Seriously.  Take yourself.  Take the young people you know, especially, because we need kids to stay interested in science.  Billy and his coworkers grew up in an era during which every trip into space was a leading national news story... and look at what they're up to these days!  For this year's World Science Festival in NYC, they built a full-size model of Billy's telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope.

This video shows a time lapse of the construction.  The full thing is visible starting around 2:55.



(Magnificent Desolation: The Long Journey Back From the Moon is Buzz Aldrin's most recent memoir. I'd love to read it, actually, because every time I see astronauts in space I wonder what it is like to come back.  The summary of the book suggests that my suspicion might be right: it is not so easy to return.  When JWST goes up, it is going to show us more of the magnificent desolation of outer space than we can even imagine.  It will be able to see back in time almost all the way to the Big Bang!)