WISE, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, scans the entire sky in infrared light, picking up the glow of hundreds of millions of objects and producing millions of images. The mission is designed to uncover objects never seen before, including the coolest stars, the universe's most luminous galaxies and some of the darkest near-Earth asteroids and comets. Its vast catalogs will help answer fundamental questions about the origins of planets, stars and galaxies.

WISE joins two other infrared missions in space -- NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency mission. WISE is different from these missions in that it will survey the entire sky. It is designed to cast a wide net to catch all sorts of unseen cosmic treasures, including rare oddities. All four infrared detectors aboard WISE were used to make this image.

NGC 7380 was discovered by Caroline Herschel in 1787. Her brother, William Herschel, discovered infrared light in 1800.

The IMAX 3-D cameras launched aboard space shuttle Atlantis on May 11, 2009, during the STS-125 mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronauts use dthe cameras to document the mission's five spacewalks to repair and upgrade Hubble. The IMAX footage will be combined with breathtaking detailed images of distant galaxies from Hubble.

The IMAX team trained Atlantis' crew at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to operate the cameras. One was mounted outside the crew cabin in the shuttle's cargo bay to capture IMAX 3-D images of the historic final servicing mission. The commander and pilot will double as filmmakers as two teams of spacewalking astronauts -- working in tandem with the shuttle's robotic arm -- perform some of the most challenging work ever undertaken in space as they replace and refurbish many of the telescope's precision instruments.

Through the world's most immersive cinematic experience, "Hubble 3D" will give audiences a front row seat as the story unfolds. It will reveal the cosmos as never before, allowing viewers of all ages to explore the grandeur of the nebulae and galaxies, the birth and death of stars, and some of the greatest mysteries of our celestial surroundings, all in IMAX 3-D.

IMAX's longstanding partnership with NASA has enabled millions of people to travel into space through a series of award-winning IMAX films. The IMAX 3-D camera made its first voyage into space in 2001 for the production of "Space Station 3D." The "Hubble 3D" film mark Warner Bros. Pictures' first venture into space.

For more information and additional Webisodes, visit http://www.imax.com/hubble/.

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Although not yet completed, Sustainability Base has begun ushering in a new era of innovation, good will and renewed American tradition. Under construction at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., the building advances the standard for what it means to be “green.” Sustainability Base is expected to achieve a platinum rating under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards for environmentally sustainable. The building, however, goes beyond LEED to serve as a showcase of NASA and partner ingenuity, incorporating technologies designed for space exploration and applied to improve life here on our home planet. Sustainability Base will be a window to the future on Earth.

"It will be one of the greenest and highest performance building in the federal government," said Steve Zornetzer, associate administrator of NASA Ames. "Today is a good day to celebrate. It's a good day to stop, reflect and show appreciation for work that was well done."

Together, NASA and Swinerton Builders workers and management signed the final beam as part of a celebration, called the "Topping Out." No one really knows how or when it originated, but the tradition places an evergreen tree, a flag or both on the last beam as it is lifted into place, it signifies the structure has reached its height and the skeleton is completed.

"As a company, we are proud to be part of a green effort that is so successful," said Dan Beyer, vice president of Swinerton Builders., San Francisco, Calif. "The tree signifies new growth as the building construction comes to fruition and is used over time; the flag represents who we are as Americans."

Over the years, the Topping Out custom remains important to ironworkers in the steel construction industry. For some, the evergreen symbolizes the successful completion of construction without loss of life, for others, it’s a good luck charm for the occupants. Similarly, the flag also has multiple meanings: the construction of a federal building, patriotism, or the American dream. Whatever the interpretation, it welcomes the future while providing a link with the past.

"We need buildings like this to bring back America," said John W. Elwood, vice president of Swinerton, Builders, Santa Clara, Calif. "The flag represents our full support for our country and our American troops. The evergreen tree is our good luck charm."

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The new analysis shows, for example, that at one line of latitude — 32.5 degrees — a line that runs through central Texas in the northern hemisphere and the country of Uruguay in the southern hemisphere, 305 nanometer UV levels have gone up by some 6 percent on average since 1979.

The primary culprit: decreasing levels of stratospheric ozone, a colorless gas that acts as Earth’s natural sunscreen by shielding the surface from damaging UV radiation.

The finding reinforces previous observations that show UV levels are stabilizing after countries began signing an international treaty that limited the emissions of ozone-depleting gases in 1987. The study also shows that increased cloudiness in the southern hemisphere over the 30-year period has impacted UV.

Jay Herman, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., stitched together data from several earth observing satellites — including NASA's Aura satellite, NOAA weather satellites, and commercial satellites — to draw his conclusions. The results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in February.

"Overall, we're still not where we'd like to be with ozone, but we're on the right track," said Jay Herman. "We do still see an increase in UV on a 30-year timescale, but it's moderate, it could have been worse, and it appears to have leveled off."

In the tropics, the increase has been minimal, but in the mid-latitudes it has been more obvious. During the summer, for example, UV has increased by more than 20 percent in Patagonia and the southern portions of South America. It has risen by nearly 10 percent in Buenos Aires, a city that's about the same distance from the equator as Little Rock, Ark. At Washington, D.C.'s latitude — about 35 degrees north — UV has increased by about 9 percent since 1979.

The southern hemisphere tends to have more UV exposure because of the ozone hole, a seasonal depletion of the ozone layer centered on the South Pole. There are also fewer particles of air pollution — which help block UV — due to the comparatively small numbers of people who live in the southern hemisphere.

Despite the overall increases, there are clear signs that ultraviolet radiation levels are on the verge of falling. Herman's analysis, which is in agreement with a World Meteorological Report published in recent years, shows that decreases in ozone and corresponding increases in UV irradiance leveled off in the mid-nineties.

The Many Sides of Radiation

Shorter ultraviolet wavelengths of light contain more energy than the infrared or visible portions of sunlight that reach Earth’s surface. Because of this, UV photons can break atmospheric chemical bonds and cause complex health effects.

Longer wavelengths (from 320 to 400 nanometers) — called UV-A — cause sunburn and cataracts. Yet, UV-A can also improve health by spurring the production of Vitamin D, a substance that's critical for calcium absorption in bones and that helps stave off a variety of chronic diseases.

UV-B, which has slightly shorter wavelengths (from 320 to 290 nanometers), damages DNA by tangling and distorting its ladder-like structure, causing a range of health problems such as skin cancer and diseases affecting the immune system.

As part of his study, Herman developed a mathematical technique to quantify the biological impacts of UV exposure. He examined and calculated how changing levels of ozone and ultraviolet irradiance affect life. For Greenbelt, Md., for example, he calculated that a 7 percent increase in UV yielded a 4.4 percent increase in the damage to skin, a 4.8 percent increase in damage to DNA, a 5 percent increase in Vitamin D production, and less than a percent of increase in plant growth.

"If you go to the beach these days, you're at slightly higher risk of getting skin cancer (without protection)," Herman said, though he noted the risk would have been even greater in the absence of regulations on ozone-depleting substances.

Last year, one of Herman's Goddard colleagues, Paul Newman, published a study showing that the ozone hole likely would have become a year-round fixture and UV radiation would increase 650 percent by 2065 in mid-latitude cities if not for the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty signed in 1987 that limited the amount of ozone-depleting gases countries could emit.

Clouds and Hemispheric Dimming

In addition to analyzing ozone and ultraviolet trends, Herman also used satellite data to study whether changes in cloudiness have affected UV trends. To his surprise, he found that increased cloudiness in the southern hemisphere produced a dimming effect that increased the shielding from UV compared to previous years.

In the higher latitudes especially, he detected a slight reduction — typically of 2 to 4 percent -- in the amount of UV passing through the atmosphere and reaching the surface due to clouds. "It’s not a large amount, but it’s intriguing," Herman said. "We aren’t sure what’s behind it yet."

Vitali Fioletov, a Canadian scientist and member of the World Meteorological Organization's advisory group on ultraviolet radiation, agreed that Herman’s findings about cloudiness warrant additional investigation. "I found the cloud effects on the global scale to be the most interesting aspect of the study,” he said. "This isn't something you could see without satellites."

Herman synthesized measurements from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) aboard Nimbus 7 and Earth Probe, the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite, NASA’s Sea-Viewing Wide Field-of-view sensor (SeaWiFS) on the commercial SeaStar satellite, and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet Instrument (SBUV) on several polar orbiting NOAA weather satellites.

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