Space
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Space
"The heavens declare the glory of God;
and the firmament shows His handiwork."
Psalm 19:1, NKJV
The number of stars in the universe, sometimes estimated as
20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
(which is 200 billion (the number of stars per galaxy) times 100 billion (the number of galaxies)), is way,
way
beyond our ability to comprehend. That is
so
many stars, that each person who has ever lived could have roughly
2 trillion
stars to themselves. Consider, though, a few verses from Psalm 147 (verses 4-5):
"He [God] counts the number of the stars; He gives names to all of them.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in strength; His understanding is infinite."
In 1996, NASA pointed the famed Hubble space telescope toward a spot near the handle of the big dipper. They picked a dark spot, an area with no known significant stars, galaxies, or inter-stellar clouds. The piece of sky was incredibly small, the size of a dime 75 feet away, or perhaps easier to understand, the size of a large grain of sand at arm's length. The goal was to see what, if anything, was there. So they left Hubble pointed at that spot for 10 whole days, taking multiple long-exposure pictures. When the pictures were all put together, the result was perhaps the most astounding, the most incredible picture ever taken. Some of you have probably seen it (links follow) -- part of the picture makes up the background for this page. For in that one tiny dark spot of space that looks black to us, they found not just one, not just a few, but over 1500 galaxies, each containing billions of stars, each an unfathomable distance away. Some were 4 billion times too dim to see with the naked eye. I'm sure the reaction by many was something like "what an awesome universe". I'd rather say this: "what an awesome God that created such a universe!".
Hubble Space Telescope
(deep space isn't empty!)
Another (even better) set of
Hubble Space Telescope
Deep Field pictures
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