For years, IMAX was the province of short and sweet documentaries like “Hubble 3D,” which follows the fascinating 20-year history of NASA’s gigantic orbiting space telescope, including two crucial repair missions.

Because large-format films have lately become the preferred way to see Hollywood blockbusters such as “Alice in Wonderland,” this documentary, which contains some of the most spectacular 3-D footage I’ve ever seen, is showing inManhattan for only one week, and only at 8 o’clock in the morning.

Hubble’s telescope didn’t work properly because of a flawed mirror when it was launched in 1990. But a subsequent fix by space shuttle astronauts allowed it to eventually record astonishingly sharp and stunningly beautiful images of galaxies as far as 100 billion light-years away.a sight that blows away the computer-generated “Avatar” when viewed on Manhattan’s only fivestory IMAX screen.

“Hubble 3D,” narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, also includes remarkable 3-D footage of an incredibly dangerousMay 2009 repair and upgrade mission that will keep Hubble aloft and working for years to come.