Covering around half of the universe's light spectrum, between infrared and radio waves, the new telescope should be able to detect distant planets, black holes and other intergalactic notables.

ENGADGET

The Nicmos sees even farther than the ACS - to the most distant galaxies yet recorded - because the expanding Universe has stretched their light into the near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Hubble sees the faintest galaxies

If the light were not infrared but were instead in the visible spectrum, there was enough of it that the naked eye could have seen a glow, according to Phaedon Avouris , manager of nanometer scale science and technology at IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ) Research Laboratories in Yorktown Heights, N.

FORBES: IBM Makes Molecule-Sized Light

In addition to taking normal images of the impact in the visible spectrum, the HRI provides an infrared "fingerprint" of the material from inside the comet's nucleus.

BBC: Q&A: Deep Impact comet mission

These tools span much of the electromagnetic spectrum from X-rays to ultraviolet to the infrared - and of course microscopy with visible light.

BBC: Terahertz scanner reveals hidden fresco at Louvre