The people of the world do love the Hubble Space Telescope. None do so more than Americans who not only gobble up its phantasmogoric yet real (except for some useful color renditions) photographs, but embrace it as a triumph of what once was called Yankee ingenuity.

We’re just about at its 20th anniversary, plus a costly new IMAX: Hubble 3D movie is out, providing a double whammy of reasons to look fondly on this most scientifically revolutionary instrument of the space age and perhaps the most productive telescope in the history of astronomy – assuming there is a way to put a yardstick to that.

On my way through a roundup of recent coverage, it was therefore a surprise to find one reporter with the nerve to give the Hubble a less-than-rave notice. The Washington Post‘s Joel Achenbach didn’t give this astronomy movie very many stars. It ran about two weeks ago. The hed says it “ultimately fails.” Really? All I’ve seen is the trailer, shown as I waited for Avatar to start a month or two ago, but it had me by the guts just watching the launch of the shuttle that ferried it to orbit. Achenbach calls the movie disjointed and under-achieving. Yet, he also adds, “the footage from orbit of the Hawaiian islands is worth the trip to the theatre.” Oh, that kind of failure – like a traffic accident that you can’t take your eyes off? Not quite, but his quarrel is that the movie is over-ambitious, that its parts clash with one another. It takes gall, and we need gall in this world, to write anything less than worshipful that involves the Hubble. Hence a nod to into-the-wind temerity.

Elsewhere, the Hubble gets mainly and in some cases nothing but praise, for movie and birthday:

• CNN – Doug Gross: Hubble and the space shuttle in IMAX 3-D ;
• Huffington Post – Catharine Smith: Orion Nebula in 3D Will Take Your Breath Away ; A shorty, breathless, with art.
• Science News – Ron Cowen: Happy 20th, Hubble ; Cover story for the April 10 issue doesn’t even mention the movie – but includes a well-selected gallery of Hubble greatest hit pics.
• Boston Globe – Mark Feeney: Hubble 3D ; He gives it a good review – but has something of a soulmate in Achenbach, sensing that part of the movie fail to mesh.
• Baltimore Sun – Frank D. Roylance: Hubble telescope to tackle the big questions ; With its time running out, Roylance reports that its biggest research project lies just ahead, a survey of distant galaxies. Neither movie nor birthday here, just the science on tap.
• Wall St. Journal – Joe Morgenstern: ‘Hubble’: Heavenly Ticket to Space ; A rave that calls the show “a perfect match of medium and subject.”
• Space Daily – Michael Potter: Zen And The Art Of Space Maintenance ;
• QMI/Toronto Sun – Jim Slotek : ‘Hubble’is out of this world ; Slotek wisely senses melancholy and shares it up top – the movie is great, but NASA is in sad shape and the Hubble’s end is near.
• NYTimes – Neil Genzlinger: Hubble 3D (2010) ; He loves it, except mainly for the narration and the narrator, Leonardo DeCaprio.

Grist for the Mill:

HST website, Movie IMAX Hubble 3-D (long load);

- Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 2:48 pm and is filed under Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.