The refurbished and substantially upgraded Hubble telescope is back online after three months of intense testing to make sure the installation was properly calibrated. The space shuttle Atlantis completed the upgrades and repairs during a thirteen-day mission in May. Engineers expect the Hubble to continue being extremely productive at least until 2014; the Hubble installation is nineteen years old now, and the Hubble has already outlived initial expectations, so I have high hopes and expectations for the future.

In addition to vastly increasing the power of the telescope, new light-measuring instruments, gyroscopes, and a much better camera are already producing results.

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Saturn, showing a meteor scar at the south pole	Barred spiral galaxy	Butterfly Nebula		Steven's quintet of galaxies

I note that there's some pretty amazing video of the recent Hubble images; like this video of the star nursery in the Carina Nebula. You can see all the official Hubble news releases—complete with high resolution images and more amazing videos here. The BBC offers a good general overview, with their own video here, and MSNBC has a more forward-looking discussion here. I note that the enhanced instrumentation, and better camera, are allowing us to capture images of the light emitted from star births that occurred millennia ago.