PRESS RELEASE:

In a two part special, NOVA "Hunting the Edge of Space" examines how a simple instrument, the telescope, has fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe and where we are in space and time. What began as a simple curiosity 400 years ago -- two spectacle lenses held a foot apart - evolved into an instrument that revolutionized science, philosophy and religion.

KUED airs "Hunting the Edge of Space" Tuesday, April 6 at 7:00 p.m. The documentary takes viewers on an adventure of discovery, technology and the furthest reaches the human eye has beheld to date. Astronomers and physicists are interviewed with hands-on demonstrations of telescopes. Dramatizations of the rich and suspenseful history of the telescope feature some of the most ingenious figures of the scientific world -- Galileo, Kepler, Newton, William Herschel, George Hale and Edwin Hubble.

"Hunting the Edge of Space" takes the views in for a close look at today's colossal telescopes, housed in space-age cathedrals or orbiting high above the Earth. The two-part special also explores today's international space race in which a new generation of ever-larger telescopes is poised to reveal answers to longstanding questions about our universe and raise some new questions.

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