For its birthday, Hubble has cake with several octillion tons of flaming candles on it

On April 24, 1990, the Space Shuttle orbiter Discovery thundered into orbit. A day later, clamped in the grip of the robotic Canadarm, the Hubble Space Telescope was pulled out of the orbiter's payload bay and then set free to orbit the Earth.

That was 31 years ago this past weekend. Since then, Hubble has looked at everything from the Moon (and even, technically, the Earth) to almost literally the edge of the observable Universe, 13+ billion light years away.

Anticipating the anniversary, ear...