(Thanks, James!)

Phil Plait over at the Bad Astronomy blog explains further:

They pointed Hubble at a fairly empty region of space, one where very few stars are seen. Then they unleashed the new Wide Field Camera 3 (called WFC3 for short) on it, taking images in infrared wavelengths just outside what the human eye can see… and they let it stare at that spot for a solid 48 hours.

The result? This picture, showing galaxies flippin' everywhere, some seen a mere 600 million years after the Big Bang itself. Because the Universe is expanding, distant galaxies appear to recede from us, and their light gets stretched out. This Doppler Effect - the same thing that makes the sound of a car engine drop in pitch when it passes you at high speed - changes the colors we see from these far-flung galaxies, so their ultraviolet light, for example, gets stretched into visible and even infrared wavelengths. What you are seeing here is actually more energetic light emitted by galaxies that's lost energy traveling across the expanding Universe, so by the time it gets here it's infrared.

So the colors are not "real" in this image; they've been translated into red, green, and blue so we can see them. The reddest objects in the image are most likely the farthest away, and may be as much as 13 billion light years away.

Thirteen billion. With a B.

Plait's deconstruction of this epic photo is worth reading in its entirety... once you're done staring and contemplating the vastness of a cosmos that barely notices the eyeblink of our existence. [Hubblesite via Bad Astronomy Blog]

The first image consists of a near-infrared view from the Hubble Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and an X-ray view from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, all mashed up. This is one of the most detailed images ever of our galaxy's mysterious core, and exposes the whole range of stellar evolution, from areas bursting with star birth, to hot new stars, to cooler old stars, to black holes.

The X-ray light reveals gas that has been heated to millions of degrees by outflows from the supermassive black hole as well as winds from nearby stars and stellar explosions. The infrared light reveals all of the areas teeming with bright newborn stars.

Check out the other images in our gallery.

Hubble Space Telescope image

Spitzer Space Telescope image

Chandra Observatory image

[NASA]

Gelatinous orbs, etc. A downloadable montage of all four, at the link. [Hubble]

A clash among members of a galactic grouping called Stephan's Quintet.

A panoramic portrait of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of Omega Centauri

An eerie pillar of star birth in the Carina Nebula rises from a sea of greenish-colored clouds.

[via Spaceweather]

The primary mission will be to install new equipment and upgrades for Hubble, which was last serviced in 2002 by Space Shuttle Columbia. The crew will install the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, a sensitive ultraviolet spectrograph and the Wide Field Camera 3, a camera that can record a large range of spectrums. Six of the gyroscopes and batteries for the satellie will also be replaced. This mission is long overdue, having originally been scheduled for May 2008, and there were further delays last fall when problems with the production of the external fuel tanks occured. In addition, an IMAX camera will be brought up, footage from which will be used for a new film about Hubble.

What makes this mission interesting is the presence of not only Atlantis, but Endeavour as well, on the launch pad. Because of Hubble's postition in orbit, the Space Shuttle will be out of range of the International Space Station, the usual standby in case of an emergency. In the instance that there is a problem this time around, Space Shuttle Endeavour can be launched to rescue the crew of the Atlantis. This mission is designated STS-400, and will carry a crew of four.

The current mission is one of the few remaining shuttle missions before the orbiter fleet is retired in 2010. Remaining missions include deliveries to the International Space Station, and will allow Atlantis to fly one final time, with Endeavour flying two more flights, with Discovery slated to fly the last mission, STS-134.

Best of luck to the crew of STS-125!

Watch launch coverage here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

On twitter? Follow astronaut Mike Massimino, Space Shuttle Atlantis and Space Shuttle Endeavour:

http://twitter.com/Astro_Mike
http://twitter.com/SSAtlantis
http://twitter.com/SSEndeavour

Graphics from NASA and MSNBC

NASA announced that Space Shuttle Endeavour was being moved to the launch pad in preperation for the Hubble repair mission. However, Space Shuttle Atlantis is the primary shuttle for this mission. According to NASA:

Endeavour will be at Launch Pad 39B in the unlikely event a rescue mission is needed during Atlantis' May flight to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. After Atlantis is cleared to land, Endeavour will move to Launch Pad 39A in late May for its upcoming STS-127 mission to the International Space Station.

Why the need for a backup shuttle? The threat of a dangerous collision with space junk has increased drastically in the area where Atlantis will be operating. And at this point, the International Space Station will be unable to help in case of a problem.

Picture from marshall43402

This false-color composite image consists of images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (green), the Spitzer Space Telescope (red), and the Chandra X-ray Observatory (purple). The image was created in 2006, but NASA re-released it over the weekend, as part of a celebration of the International Year Of Astronomy 2009. [NASA]

Scientists theorize that the "G" ring formed from icy debris that scattered when meteorites crashed into the newly discovered moon. Said Cornell University astronomer Matthew Hedman:

Before Cassini, the G ring was the only dusty ring that was not clearly associated with a known moon, which made it odd. The discovery of this moonlet, together with other Cassini data, should help us make sense of this previously mysterious ring.

Meanwhile, NASA was seeking your votes on where to point the Hubble Space Telescope next, and nearly half of the 140,000 voters chose an interacting pair of spiral galaxies, Arp 274, which appear to be shaking hands. The full-color image of this galactic get-together will come out during the 100 Hours of Astronomy event, April 2-5.

All three views, in this one composite image, shows how the same features of the galaxy appear in different spectra. The infrared light shows the heat from the galaxy's dust lanes, which follow the same paths as the visible-light stars, which form in those dust lane. Image by AP/NASA)

The key to obtaining such a sharp image was combining the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) with some images gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope's Infrared Astronomy Camera (IRAC). Clouds of dust obscure the center of the galaxy from us, but infrared light penetrates those clouds.

It turns out that a population of massive stars fill the hot ionized gas swirling around the inner 300 light years of the galaxy. And the stars are distributed more widely than scientists realized. Says NASA:

Astronomers now see that the massive stars are not confined to one of the three known clusters of massive stars in the Galactic Center, known as the Central cluster, the Arches cluster, and the Quintuplet cluster. These three clusters are easily seen as tight concentrations of bright, massive stars in the NICMOS image. The distributed stars may have formed in isolation, or they may have originated in clusters that have been disrupted by strong gravitational tidal forces.

[Hubble via New Scientist]

NASA officials say the Eye is just a curiously shaped galaxy, but it's just passed through another galaxy — the ring-shaped blue "mouth" below — leaving chaos, and a mass of new stars, in its wake. The pair of galaxies, known as Arp 147, appears in the Arp Atlas Of Peculiar Galaxies, compiled by Halton Arp in 1966. (He looked into the Eye, and now look at him.) [Space.com]

NASA thinks it can restart a back-up data-handling system on Hubble that hasn't been used since the telescope launched in 1990. The telescope's data will be re-routed to that system, and the telescope could start relaying images as soon as Friday. Early tomorrow, NASA scientists will put Hubble into "safe" mode for the sixth time in 18 years, and send hundreds of lines of complicated code up to the telescope.

[Hubblesite and AP]

X-ray images:

Radio waves:

[Chandra Observatory]

And no, I don't know why part of the image is censored. Is it not work-safe? Is there something happening that NASA doesn't want us to know about?

That circle of blue gas at the bottom center may be hiding another young star cluster. This "fantasy-like landscape" is 100 light years wide and features dark dust towers rising above a glowing wall of gases on the surface of the dark molecular cloud that births new stars. Scientists theorize a supernova explosion may have triggered this frenzy of star creation. Happy orbitversary, Hubble! [Hubblesite]

Images from the Hubble Space Telescope. [Bad Astronomy]

Nuna, a Dutch solar car, finished first in the 2001 World Solar Challenge, reaching a record-breaking top speed of 100 KPH and crossing from Darwin to Adelaide in a record-breaking 32 hours and 39 minutes. The car included dual junction and triple junction gallium-arsenide solar cells, which the European Space Agency had developed for its SMART-1 mission to the Moon. The car also had Maximum Power Point Trackers, which balance the power output between the battery and the solar cells, and which the ESA included on its Rosetta space probe. And the Hubble Space Telescope's contribution was two solar strips from its large solar array, salvaged by an astronaut in 1993. Here's a video. Let's not mock the wacky Dutch accents:

And Nuna's successor, Nuna II, uses improved ESA solar cells that harvest 20 percent more power.

But it's not just solar cars that are benefiting from space technology. The Pescarolo-Judd C 60 prototype racing car uses composite materials developed for space flight to reduce its weight by 38 kg, giving it better heat protection while boosting its speed.

And this is just the beginning of the ways space tech is being used in super-fast cars, or will soon be.

A special kind of carbon fiber known as carbon-carbon, developed for missile nosecones, is already used to create car brakes that can withstand temperatures of up to 3000 F. But soon, NASA says, it'll be used to create higher performance pistons and connecting rods that could allow engines to go way faster without overheating.

And when you're taking sharp turns at 150 mph, you'll soon be in less danger of rolling over and ending up looking like an accordion. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Variable Dynamics Testing (VDT) vehicle will use a computer algorithm to alter several factors in rollovers, including the "understeer coefficient," load-transfer distribution and frequency and damping of the "vehicle roll mode."

Not to mention the fact that NASA sponsored a contest to develop a "Personal Air Vehicle," aka "flying car."

Meanwhile, the Mars Spirit Rover's AutoNav system lets it navigate the Martian terrain unaided, and could help to lead to the driverless cars that GM and other carmakers say we'll have within a decade.

Actual race cars pack a lot of technology from the space program. For example, NASCAR drivers used to suffer third-degree burns on their feet, when the metal floorboards of their cockpits reached 330 F from the overheating engines... until 1996, when NASCAR and the Kennedy Space Center experimented with installing the heat shields from the Space Shuttle in its cars. Similarly, the cooling flame-retardant suits NASCAR drivers wear come from the Advance Crew Escape Suits (ACES) worn by Shuttle crews.

And then there are some uses of NASA technology that improve cars in less turbo-charging ways. Like this child car seat, which uses NASA's "systems integration expertise" to creating a better environment for the kiddies, including an entertainment system, video monitoring and a biotelemetry tracking system. Basically, it's like putting your kid inside a Teletubbie. And then there's this car wax, which claims to use NASA technology to ensure you'll never have to wax your car again. It looks like NASA is pretty desperate to find some valuable uses of its technology before its budget gets sliced down to nothing.

What makes these photos art is the fact that humans have altered them, argues the Museum's Gary Vikan in a Baltimore Sun op-ed:

These photos of outer space, like all photographs in art museum exhibitions, earn their public display precisely because of the creative interventions of a talented human being. In the case of the Hubble, our visitors soon come to realize that the data from which these images are created are not visual but numerical, and that you and I could never "see" the Cat's Eye Nebula the way its photo shows it, even if a rocket could somehow propel us to its near neighborhood some 3,000 light-years away. Why? Because the radiation emitted by the nebula and given visual expression in the photographic print is substantially outside the boundaries of human sight.