The secrets unlocked by the Hubble telescope are extraordinary and beautiful, and yet no matter how you see them; printed in a magazine, displayed across a website, or even viewed on a High Definition screen, you can’t help but feel that you’re not getting the full view. The light entering the orbiting telescope is so dense in detail, so compounded in context, that it’s not until you can feel like you’re swimming through it that you’ll find a real appreciation of just what those cosmic swirls and luminous flares mean. A new film set for release on March 19th, Hubble presents the telescope’s remarkable imagery across IMAX screens, delivering a moving journey inside a cloudy nebula, through colliding galaxies, past a stellar demise, and to the misshapen and mysterious galaxies that exist right at the very edge of the telescope’s view.

The Hubble doesn’t take pictures in the way we’re used to. Instead it gathers raw light data that is composed of visible as well as near-ultralight and near-infrared light. This data can be translated into flat photographs or into three-dimensional images thanks to complex calculations and the power of Supercomputers. The results are movie sequences where we go beyond the zoom and actually move into the scenery, exploring views from any and every angle, always at the highest levels of detail.

At one point we approach a large, purple nebula with a large, depression of space at its centre. We move up, over its edge and then fall and slide down inside that depression and you can almost feel your back pushing against the purple gas walls as you settle, cozy in the bottom to look up and see the clumps of gasses forming new stars and planets up above.

The film is narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio who adds an interesting tone. As he explains that the large fluffy nebula we’ve just settled into is ninety trillion miles across and holds winds that reach speeds of 5 million miles per hour, there’s a falter in his voice as if the facts are just too astonishing for words.

The rendered computer journeys lead to a story about the Hubble itself as we follow the Shuttle Atlantis and its crew from their take-off on Earth into orbit alongside the telescope in order to perform a series of repairs and upgrades designed to extend its service. Recorded by an IMAX 3D camera installed into the shuttle’s cargo bay, we’re treated to looming, bug’s eye views of the telescope as its brought up alongside, it’s large solar panels pivoting like wings, its reflecting shroud and shielding capturing and reflecting the light into space.

We’ve seen Shuttle missions before as well as spacewalks, but none quite like this one as the astronauts take hours to put on their protective suits and helmets and then attempt to open up and at some points even crawl inside the Hubble itself. As narrator DiCaprio reminds us, any cut or puncture to their space suits will cost the astronauts their lives, and so the telescope looms menacing with its angular steel panels, its sharp corners, and jutting mechanical components. Suddenly by comparison it’s obvious the lengths NASA invests to make most spacecraft smooth and corner-free, and just how dangerous what may seem like a simple repair mission is.

Using a network of tethers and restraints the astronauts battle with their encumbered suits and try to find purchase while floating in space. They work at detailed mechanical tasks as their position in orbit rapidly changes the available light through night and day and time rapidly races pass.

The guts of the telescope seem to fight their every move, confounding them with uncooperative parts that refuse to come off and or take hold of replacements. For all intents and purposes these scenes have all the tension of experts trying to defuse a bomb. One false move and someone dies.

The film was originally shot in IMAX 3D, using a special camera built just for the Atlantis Shuttle, and in most theatres this is how it’s being presented. I watched it at the Ontario Science Centre’s Omnimax Theatre which has a larger, more immersive Dome screen that surrounds the audience from all sides. It uses a 2D version of the film, but with its larger screen it’s easier to see more detail. Not having seen the 3D version I can’t compare, but director of photography James Neihouse, who was in attendance, mused that the dome screen added a lot to his film, and that it played well in both formats.

His special camera allowed for only eight minutes of film stock for the astronauts to use in orbit which, combined with the Hubble imagery, brings the movie’s running time to just over forty minutes. With all the spectacle and tense drama it delivers, it just feels too short.

To find a theatre in your area, consult www.imax.com/hubble