CREDIT: IMAX SPACE LTD
Hubble the movie opens viewers' eyes to experience awe and glory.

A few days ago I was looking for something interesting to watch. A movie. I stopped at a convenience store that claimed to have a good selection of DVDs at the back. The movies seemed to be organized into two main sections: Horror and Action Drama. I was looking for something a little different, though, and felt that if I methodically surveyed each row of discs on the racks, I'd find whatever I was meant to find that afternoon.

At last, there it was. It sat just past the last DVD jacket featuring a jagged-toothed human-flesh-eating eel the size of 10 CN Towers. And it was just down from another jacket, this one with an artfully produced glossy of three zombie-esque young adults, who apparently never went to finishing school, missed the ethics lecture on cannibalism, and thus had developed a taste for the severely limited diet that makes films about them marketable.

It was an IMAX/NASA film called Hubble. I picked it up and paid for the overnight rental. I took the disc home, watched it, and then visited the Wikipedia article on the Hubble Telescope. I learned.

I hadn't realized that the Hubble Telescope took 10 years to build. Ten thousand people were involved in making it, not only employees of NASA, but many also from the European Space Agency. Plus Canadians. It was delivered into orbit 500 or so kilometers above the earth by the Space Shuttle, Discovery.

Bad news, though, right after it was launched. The machine looked great, but the pictures it was sending back were lousy. The main lens was out of whack and nobody figured that out until the day after the extended warranty ran out. Amazingly, another shuttle crew went up and repaired the defect. The last house call technicians made to the telescope was in the Shuttle, Atlantis in 2009.

Ten years of patient engineering and construction. Ten thousand people to build it. Ten-million-kilometre space journeys to make repairs. Able to see light that has taken 10 billion years to journey to our blue marble. Helping astronomers to estimate that there are perhaps 102 billion galaxies in the universe. That's about 10 times two galaxies for every person on the planet.

If there is a God, what does Hubble teach us about him? He's made people capable of astounding journeys. He's made them able to dream. He's made them able to build suction toilets that work in space. He's made them able to show courage, perseverance, strength, love for their work and cooperation. He's made a universe of a scale that is beyond words. He's made it possible for us to experience awe and glory.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.