Astronomy
“The Heavens Declare His Glory”
“Dedicated to Him who sits upon the throne”
that men might see and Glorify the God of all creation.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities
—His eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.
Romans 1:20
Below you will see angels, the face of a child, the skull of a man, a cross, a crown of thorns,
praying hands, an ascending dove, a hand reaching for a crown and other works of His Hands.
My belief is the Lord has made “Monuments in the Heavens” commemorating events on earth.
Also below, you will see Hubble Images and read scientific data about those images.
Included are several passages from the Bible (many of which)
depict in “Astronomical Terms” not only the past but also the future.
The Scriptures clearly state that in the last days,
there will be signs in the heavens and on the earth.
Prepare yourself to witness these events!
Blessing to you and your house
When I look in to your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and stars that you set in place-what are mere
mortals, that you concern yourself with them; humans, For He shall give His angels charge over you,
that you watch over them with such care? Ps 8:3-4 To keep you in all your ways. Psalms 91:11
“Image on left”
(Gamma Ray Burst (GRB),
considered by scientist as the most powerful force in the universe
http://www.universetoday.com
On March 19, 2008 at 2:13 am EDT, NASA’s Swift satellite detected an explosion from the constellation Bootes,
and sent an alert to ground-based telescopes. At the same moment, the Russian KONUS instrument on NASA’s Wind
satellite and a robotic wide-field optical camera called “Pi of the Sky” in Chile captured
the first visible light from this incredibly bright and powerful gamma ray burst.
Within the next 15 seconds, the burst brightened enough to be visible in a dark sky to human eyes.
For a few moments, the GRB had a million times the luminosity of the entire Milky Way Galaxy.
It briefly crested at a magnitude of 5.3 on the astronomical brightness scale.
Incredibly, the dying star was 7.5 billion light-years away.
Astronomers say the reason this gamma ray burst was so bright was that it was aimed almost directly at Earth.
“Image on right”
(Nebulae are star nurseries)
The Eagle Nebula (catalogued as Messier 16 or M16, and as NGC 6611) is a young open cluster of stars in the constellation Serpens, discovered by Jean-Philippe de Cheseaux in 1745-46.
Its name derives from its shape which is reminiscent of an eagle.
It is the subject of a famous photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope,
which shows pillars of star-forming gas and dust within the nebula.
(The Pillars are shown 3rd image below)
The heavens declare the glory of God,
the dome of the sky speaks the work of His hands.
Every day it utters speech, every night it reveals knowledge.
Without speech, without a word, without their voices being heard,
their line goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world.
In them He places a tent for the sun,
which comes out like a bridegroom from the bridal chamber,
with delight like an athlete to run his race.
It rises at one side of the sky, circles around the other side,
and nothing escapes it’s heat. Ps 19:1-7
Radiation from hot stars off the top of the picture illuminates and erodes this giant, gaseous pillar. Additional ultraviolet radiation causes the gas to glow, giving the pillar its red halo of light.
This picture, taken by the newly installed Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, shows the upper 2.5 light-years of the nebula, a height that equals 23 million roundtrips to the Moon. The entire nebula is 7 light-years long. The Cone Nebula resides 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Monoceros.
Praise Him, sun and moon!
Praise Him, all shining stars!
Praise Him, highest heaven,
and waters above the heavens!
Let them praise the name of Adonai,
for He commanded, and they were created.
He established them forever and for ever,
He has given a law to which they must conform. Ps 148:3-6
“I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea. Ex 15:1
This wide-field image of the Eagle Nebula was taken at the National Science Foundation’s
0.9-meter telescope on Kitt Peak with the NOAO Mosaic CCD camera.
It shows the areas seen in greater detail with Hubble’s Wide-Field Planetary Camera 2
in 1995 and Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2005.
(note: this is the only non-Hubble image)
To Him who alone has done great wonders, for His grace continues forever;
To Him who skillfully made the heavens, for His grace continues forever;
to Him who spread out the earth on the water, for His grace continues forever;
to Him who made the great lights, for His grace continues forever;
the moon and stars to rule the night, for His grace continues forever; Ps 136:4-9
“The Pillars”
Undersea corral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern.
They are part of the “Eagle Nebula”
(also called M16 — the 16th object in Charles Messier’s 18th century catalog of “fuzzy” objects that aren’t comets), a nearby star-forming region 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Serpens.
Praise God in his holy place!
Praise Him in the heavenly dome of His power!
Praise Him for His mighty deeds!
Praise Him for His surpassing greatness! Ps 150:1-2
“Image on left”
Close-up of M16, The Pillars”
STELLAR “EGGS” EMERGE FROM MOLECULAR CLOUD.
This column of cool molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule) and dust that is an incubator for new stars. The stars are embedded inside finger-like protrusions extending from the top of the nebula. Each “fingertip” is somewhat larger than our own solar system.
The pillar is slowly eroding away by the ultraviolet light from nearby hot stars, a process called “photo-evaporation”. As it does, small globules of especially dense gas buried within the cloud is uncovered. These globules have been dubbed “EGGs” — an acronym for “Evaporating Gaseous Globules”. The shadows of the EGGs protect gas behind them, resulting in the finger-like structures at the top of the cloud.
Forming inside at least some of the EGGs are embryonic stars — stars that abruptly stop growing when the EGGs are uncovered and they are separated from the larger reservoir of gas from which they were drawing mass. Eventually the stars emerge, as the EGGs themselves succumb to photo-evaporation.
“Image on right”
Previously unseen details of a mysterious, complex structure within the Carina Nebula (NGC 3372) are revealed by this image of the “Keyhole Nebula” . The picture is a montage assembled from four different April 1999 telescope pointings with Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, which used six different color filters.
The picture is dominated by a large, approximately circular feature, which is part of the Keyhole Nebula, named in the 19th century by Sir John Herschel. This region, about 8000 light-years from Earth, is located adjacent to the famous explosive variable star Eta Carinae, which lies just outside the field of view toward the upper right.
The Carina Nebula also contains several other stars that are among the hottest and most massive known, each about 10 times as hot, and 100 times as massive, as our Sun.
The circular Keyhole structure contains both bright filaments of hot, fluorescing gas, and dark silhouetted clouds of cold molecules and dust, all of which are in rapid, chaotic motion. The high resolution of the Hubble images reveals the relative three-dimensional locations of many of these features, as well as showing numerous small dark globules that may be in the process of collapsing to form new stars.
The LORD God formed the man from the dust of the You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, the span of my years is as a breath. Selah Psalm 39:5
and the man became a living being. Genesis 2:7
“Image on Left”
“Hubble’s Variable Nebula”
is named (like the Hubble telescope itself) after the American astronomer Edwin P. Hubble, who carried out some of the early studies of this object. It is a fan-shaped cloud of gas and dust which is illuminated by Monocerotis, the
bright star at the bottom end of the nebula. Dense condensations of dust near the star cast shadows out into the nebula, and as they move the illumination changes, giving rise to the variations first noted by Hubble.
The star itself, lying about 2,500 light-years from Earth, cannot be seen directly, but only through light scattered off of dust particles in the surrounding nebula. R Mon is believed to have a mass of about 10 times that of the Sun, and to have an age of only 300,000 years.
“Image on right”
This Hubble telescope snapshot of MyCn18, a young planetary nebula,
reveals that the object has an hourglass shape with an intricate pattern of “etchings” in its walls.
A planetary nebula is the glowing relic of a dying, Sun-like star.
The sands of time are running out for the central star of this hourglass-shaped planetary nebula.
With its nuclear fuel exhausted, this brief, spectacular, closing phase of a Sun-like star’s life occurs as its
outer layers are ejected – its core becoming a cooling, fading White Dwarf.
Astronomers have recently used the Hubble Space Telescope to make a series of images of
planetary nebulae, including the one above. Here, delicate rings of colorful glowing gas (nitrogen-red,
hydrogen-green, and oxygen-blue) outline the tenuous walls of the “hourglass”.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, (Jesus)
that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16
In January 2002, a dull star in an obscure constellation suddenly became 600,000 times more luminous than our Sun, temporarily making it the brightest star in our Milky Way galaxy. The mysterious star, called V838 Monocerotis, has long since faded back to obscurity. But observations by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope of a phenomenon called a “light echo” around the star have uncovered remarkable new features.
These details promise to provide astronomers with a CAT-scan-like probe
of the three-dimensional structure of shells of dust surrounding an aging star
What is a light Echo?
It is light from a stellar explosion echoing off dust surrounding the star. V838 Monocerotis produced enough energy in a brief flash to illuminate surrounding dust, like a spelunker taking a flash picture of the walls of an undiscovered cavern. The star presumably ejected the illuminated dust shells in previous outbursts. Light from the latest outburst travels to the dust and then is reflected to Earth. Because of this indirect path, the light arrives at Earth months after light from the star that traveled directly toward Earth
How much more shall the blood of Christ,
who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God,
cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God! Heb 9:14 
SN 1006: A Supernova Ribbon
What created this unusual space ribbon?
Most assuredly, one of the most violent explosions ever witnessed by ancient humans.
Back in the year 1006 AD, light reached Earth from a stellar explosion in the constellation of the Wolf (Lupus), creating a “guest star” in the sky that appeared brighter than Venus and lasted for over two years.
The supernova, now cataloged at SN 1006, occurred about 7,000 light years away and has left a large remnant that ontinues to expand and fade today. Pictured above is a small part of that expanding supernova remnant dominated by a thin and outwardly moving shock front that heats and ionizes surrounding ambient gas.
SN 1006 now has a diameter of nearly 60 light years. In March 2008, an even more powerful explosion (read more about Gamma Ray Burst). occurred far across the universe that was visible to modern humans, without any optical aid, for a few seconds.
In those days I will pour out my Spirit.
I will show wonders in the sky and on earth- blood, fire and columns of smoke.
The sun will be turned in to darkness and the moon into blood
before the coming of the great and terrible Day of the Lord! Joel 3
NGC 2207 and IC 2163, Merging Galaxies Constellation Canis Major
Distance from earth, 114 million light years
NGC 2207 has a diameter of 143,000 light years
IC 2163 has a diameter of 101,000 light years
In the direction of the constellation Canis Major, two spiral galaxies pass by each other
like majestic ships in the night. The near-collision has been caught in images taken by
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2.
The larger and more massive galaxy is cataloged as NGC 2207 (on the left in the Hubble Heritage image), and the smaller one on the right is IC 2163. Strong tidal forces from NGC 2207 have distorted the shape of IC 2163, flinging out stars and gas into long streamers stretching out a
hundred thousand light-years toward the right-hand edge of the image.
All this also comes from the LORD Almighty,
wonderful in counsel and magnificent in wisdom. Is 28:29 
Uncovering the Veil Nebula
Hubble photographed three magnificent sections of the Veil Nebula – the shattered remains of a supernova that exploded thousands of years ago. This series of images provides beautifully detailed views of the delicate, wispy structure resulting from this cosmic explosion. The Veil Nebula is one of the most spectacular supernova remnants in the sky. The entire shell spans about 3 degrees, corresponding to about 6 full moons.
The Veil Nebula is a prototypical middle-aged supernova remnant, and is an ideal laboratory for studying the physics of supernova remnants because of it’s unobscured location in our galaxy, its relative closeness, and its large size. Also known as the Cygnus Loop, the Veil Nebula is located in the constellation of Cygnus, the Swan.It is about 1,500 light-years away from Earth.
Stars in our galaxy, and in other galaxies, are constantly in the process of being born and dying. How long a star lives depends on how big and heavy it is. The bigger the star, the shorter its life. When a star significantly heavier than our Sun runs out of fuel, it collapses and blows itself apart in a catastrophic supernova explosion. A supernova releases so much light that it can outshine a whole galaxy of stars put together. The exploding star sweeps out a huge bubble in its surroundings, fringed with actual stellar debris along with material swept up by the blast wave. This glowing, brightly-colored shell of gas forms a nebula that astronomers call a “supernova remnant.
For Christ himself has brought peace to us.
“He united Jews and Gentiles into one people”
when, in His own body on the cross, He broke down the wall of hostility that separated us.
He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations.
He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in Himself one new people from the two groups.
Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of His death on the cross,
and our hostility toward each other was put to death. Eph 2:14-16
Super Star clusters in the Antennae Galaxies
This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. During the course of the collision, billions of stars will be formed. The brightest and most compact of these star birth regions are called super star clusters.
The two spiral galaxies
started to interact a few hundred million years ago, making the Antennae galaxies one of the
nearest and youngest examples of a pair of colliding galaxies. Nearly half of the faint objects in the Antennae image are young clusters containing tens of thousands of stars. The orange blobs to the left and right of image center are the two cores of the original galaxies and consist mainly of old stars criss-crossed by filaments of dust, which appears brown in the image.
The two galaxies are dotted with brilliant blue star-forming regions
surrounded by glowing hydrogen gas, appearing in the image in pink.
The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like “arms” extending far out from the nuclei of the two galaxies, best seen by ground-based telescopes. These “tidal tails” were formed during the initial encounter of the galaxies some 200 to 300 million years ago.
In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways,
but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son,
whom He appointed heir of all things,
and through whom He made the universe.
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of His being,
sustaining all things by His powerful word.
After He (Jesus) had provided purification for sins,
He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. Hebrews 1:1-3
“Image on left”
Hubble photographs warped galaxy
Hubble has captured an image of an unusual edge-on galaxy, revealing remarkable details
of its warped dusty disk and showing how colliding galaxies spawn the formation of new generations of stars.
The dust and spiral arms of normal spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, appear flat when viewed edge-on.
This image of ESO 510-G13 shows a galaxy that, by contrast, has an unusual twisted disk structure, first seen in ground-based photographs obtained at the European Southern Observatory in Chile.
ESO 510-G13 lies in the southern constellation Hydra, roughly 150 million light-years from Earth.
The strong warping of the disk indicates that ESO 510-G13 has recently undergone a collision with a nearby galaxy and is in the process of swallowing it. Gravitational forces distort the structures of the galaxies as their stars, gas, and dust merge together in a process that takes millions of years. Eventually the disturbances will die out, and ESO 510-G13 will become a normal-appearing single galaxy.
“Image on right”
Galactic Silhouettes, (also Constellation Hydra)
This new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 shows the
unique galaxy pair called NGC 3314. Through an extraordinary chance alignment, a face-on spiral galaxy
lies precisely in front of another larger spiral. This line-up provides us with the rare chance to visualize
dark material within the front galaxy, seen only because it is silhouetted against the object behind it.
Dust lying in the spiral arms of the foreground galaxy stands out where it absorbs light from the more distant galaxy.
This silhouetting shows us where the interstellar dust clouds are located, and how much light they absorb.
The outer spiral arms of the front galaxy appear to change from bright to dark, as they are projected first
against deep space, and then against the bright background of the other galaxy. NGC 3314 lies about 140 million light-years from Earth, in the direction of the southern hemisphere constellation Hydra. The bright blue stars forming a pinwheel shape near the center of the front galaxy have formed recently from interstellar gas and dust.
Can you lead out the constellations of the zodiac in their season
or guide the Great Bear and its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the sky?
Can you determine how they affect the earth? Job 38:31-33
“Image on left”
GHOSTLY REFLECTIONS IN THE PLEIADES
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has caught this dark interstellar cloud being destroyed by the passage of one of the brightest stars in the Pleiades star cluster.
Like a flashlight beam shining off the wall of a cave, the star is reflecting light off the surface of
pitch black clouds of cold gas laced with dust. These are called reflection nebulae.
The famous cluster is easily visible in the evening sky during the winter months as a small grouping of bright blue stars, named after the “Seven Sisters” of Greek mythology. Resembling a small dipper,this star cluster lies in the constellation Taurus at a distance of about 380 light-years from Earth.
The unaided eye can discern about half a dozen bright stars in the cluster, but a small telescope will reveal that the Pleiades contains many hundreds of fainter stars.
“Image on right”
This dramatic Hubble image of the Orion Nebula (M42) reveals numerous treasures that
reside within the nearby, intense star- forming region.
More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys. The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars.
The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth.
Astronomers used 520 Hubble images, taken in five colors in 2004 and 2005, to make this picture.
God said, “Let there be lights in the dome of the sky to divide the day from the night;
let them be for signs, seasons, days and years;
and let them be for lights in the dome of the sky to give light to the earth;
and that is how it was. God made the two great lights-
the larger light to rule the day and the smaller light to rule the night- and the stars.
God put them in the dome of the sky to give light to darkness;
and God said that it was good. Gen 1:14-18
“Colliding galaxies”
This new Hubble atlas dramatically illustrates how galaxy collisions produce a remarkable variety of intricate structures in never-before-seen detail.
Astronomers observe only one out of a million galaxies in the nearby universe in the act of colliding. However, galaxy mergers were much more common long ago when they were closer together, because the expanding universe was smaller. Astronomers study how gravity choreographs their motions in the game of celestial bumper cars and try to observe them in action.
For all their violence, galactic smash-ups take place at a glacial rate by human standards – timescales on the order of several hundred million years. The images in the Hubble atlas capture snapshots of the various merging galaxies at various stages in their collision.
Pilate then took Yeshua (Jesus) and had Him flogged.
The soldiers twisted “a crown of thorns” and placed it on His head, John 19:1-2
Hubble image highlights striking swirling dust lanes and glittering globular clusters in oddball galaxy NGC 7049.
The NASA/ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured this image of NGC 7049, a mysterious looking galaxy on the border between spiral and elliptical galaxies. NGC 7049 is found in the constellation of Indus, and is the brightest of a cluster of galaxies, a so-called Brightest Cluster Galaxy (BCG). Typical BCGs are some of the oldest and most massive galaxies. They provide excellent opportunities for astronomers to study the elusive globular clusters lurking within.
The globular clusters in NGC 7049 are seen as the sprinkling of small faint points of light in the galaxy’s halo. The halo – the ghostly region of diffuse light surrounding the galaxy – is composed of myriads of individual stars and provides a luminous background to the remarkable swirling ring of dust lanes surrounding NGC 7049’s core. Globular clusters are very dense and compact groupings of a few hundreds of thousands of stars bound together by gravity. They contain some of the first stars to be produced in a galaxy.
NGC 7049 has far fewer such clusters than other similar giant galaxies in very big, rich groups.
This indicates to astronomers how the surrounding environment influenced the formation of galaxy halos in the early Universe.The constellation of Indus, or the Indian, is one of the least conspicuous in the southern sky. It was named in the 16th century .
For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do? Deut 3:24
(Within these extended arms of a galaxy, are the location of Nebulae, the birthing ground for stars)
Hubble image of the nearby spiral galaxy M74 is an iconic reminder of the impending season.
Bright knots of glowing gas light up the spiral arms, indicating a rich environment of star formation.
Messier 74, also called NGC 628, is a stunning example of a “grand-design” spiral galaxy that is viewed by Earth observers nearly face-on. Its perfectly symmetrical spiral arms emanate from the central nucleus and are dotted with clusters of young blue stars and glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen atoms that have lost their electrons). These regions of star formation show an excess of light at ultraviolet wavelengths. Tracing along the spiral arms are winding dust lanes that also begin very near the galaxy’s nucleus and follow along the length of the spiral arms.
M74 is located roughly 32 million light-years away in the direction of the constellation Pisces, the Fish. It is the dominant member of a small group of about half a dozen galaxies, the M74 galaxy group. In its entirety, it is estimated that M74 is home to about 100 billion stars, making it slightly smaller than our Milky Way.
and its people and the animals that are on it,
and I give it to anyone I please. Jeremiah 27:5
“Image on left”
Hubble Heritage Image of the Prototypical Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300
The Hubble telescope has captured a display of starlight, glowing gas, and silhouetted dark clouds of interstellar dust in this grand image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. NGC 1300 is considered to be prototypical of barred spiral galaxies.
Barred spirals differ from normal spiral galaxies in that the arms of the galaxy do not spiral all the way into the center, but are connected to the two ends of a straight bar of stars containing the nucleus at its center.
At Hubble’s resolution, a myriad of fine details is revealed throughout the galaxy’s arms, disk, bulge, and nucleus. Blue and red super-giants, clusters, and star-forming regions are well resolved across the spiral arms, and dust lanes trace out fine structures in the disk and bar. Numerous more distant galaxies are visible in the background, and are seen even through the densest regions of NGC 1300.
The nucleus of NGC 1300 shows an extraordinary “grand-design” spiral structure that is about 3,300 light-years in diameter. Only galaxies with large-scale bars appear to have these grand-design inner spiral disk.
“Image on right”
The extraordinary “polar-ring” galaxy NGC 4650A.
Located about 130 million light-years away, NGC 4650A is one of only 100 known polar-ring galaxies. Their unusual disk-ring structure is not yet understood fully. One possibility is that polar rings are the remnants of colossal collisions between two galaxies sometime in the distant past, probably at least 1 billion years ago.
During the collision the gas from a smaller galaxy would have been stripped off and captured by a larger galaxy, forming a new ring of dust, gas, and stars, which orbit around the inner galaxy almost at right angles to the larger galaxy’s disk. This is the vertical polar ring which we see almost edge-on in Hubble’s Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 image of NGC 4560A, created using 3 different color filters (which transmit blue, green, and near-infrared light).
His brightness is like the sun, rays come forth from His hand-
that is where His power is concealed. Habakkuk 3:3B-4
“Image on left”
The nebula, formally catalogued NGC 6543, “Cat’s Eye Nebula”
was the first planetary nebula to be discovered, it is one of the most complex such nebulae seen in space. A planetary nebula forms when Sun-like stars gently eject their outer gaseous layersthat form bright nebulae with amazing and confounding shapes.
“Image on right”
“Ant Nebula, Mz3”
Why isn’t this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?
Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula’s center.
One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star’s own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.
He (Jesus) who descended is the very one who ascended higher than
all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe,. Ephesians 4:10
When you thought these interactions couldn’t look any stranger, this image of a trio of galaxies, called Arp 194, looks like one of the galaxies has sprung a leak. The bright blue streamer is really a stretched spiral arm full of newborn blue stars. This typically happens when two galaxies interact and gravitationally tug at each other.
Resembling a pair of owl eyes, the two nuclei of the colliding galaxies can be seen in the process of merging at the upper left. The bizarre blue bridge of material extending out from the northern component looks like it connects to a third galaxy but in reality the galaxy is in the background and not connected at all. Hubble’s sharp view allows astronomers to try and visually sort out what are foreground and background objects when galaxies, superficially, appear to overlap.
For in Him (Jesus) dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
And you are complete in Him, which is the head of all principality and power: Colossians 2:9
Arp 274, also known as NGC 5679, is a system of “three galaxies” that appear to be partially overlapping in the image, although they may be at somewhat different distances. The spiral shapes of two of these galaxies appear mostly intact. The third galaxy (to the far left) is more compact, but shows evidence of star formation.
Two of the three galaxies are forming new stars at a high rate. This is evident in the bright blue knots of star formation that are strung along the arms of the galaxy on the right and along the small galaxy on the left.
The largest component is located in the middle of the three. It appears as a spiral galaxy, which may be barred. The entire system resides at about 400 million light-years away from Earth in the constellation Virgo.
Through Him (Jesus) all things were made;
without Him nothing was made that has been made. He counts the number of the stars,
In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. He calls them all by name. Ps 147:4
John 1:2-4
“Image on left”
Hoag’s object: A wheel within a wheel
A nearly perfect ring of hot, blue stars pinwheels about the yellow nucleus of an unusual galaxy known as Hoag’s Object. This image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captures a face-on view of the galaxy’s ring of stars, revealing more detail than any existing photo of this object. The image may help astronomers unravel clues on how such strange objects form.The entire galaxy is about 120,000 light-years wide, which is slightly larger than our Milky Way
Galaxy. The blue ring,
which is dominated by clusters of young, massive stars, contrasts sharply with the yellow nucleus of mostly older stars. What appears to be a “gap” separating the two stellar populations may actually contain some star clusters that are almost too faint to see. Curiously, an object that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hoag’s Object can be seen in the gap at the one o’clock position. The object is probably a background ring galaxy.
“Image on right”
A sky full of glittering jewels
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has given us a keyhole view towards the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy, where a dazzling array of stars reside. Most of the view of our galaxy is obscured by dust. Hubble peered into the Sagittarius Star Cloud, a narrow, dust-free region, providing this spectacular glimpse of a treasure chest full of stars.
Some of these gems are among the oldest inhabitants of our galaxy. By studying the older stars that pack our Milky Way’s hub, scientists can learn more about the evolution of our galaxy. Many of the brighter stars in this image show vivid colors. A star’s color reveals its temperature, one of its most “vital statistics.” Knowing a star’s temperature and the power of the star’s radiation allow scientists to make conclusions about its age and mass. Most blue stars are young and hot, up to ten times hotter than our Sun.
They consume their fuel much faster and live shorter lives than our Sun. Red stars come in two flavors: small stars and “red giants”. Smaller red stars generally have a temperature about half that of our Sun, consuming their fuel slowly and thus, live the longest. “Red giant” stars are at the end of their lives because they have exhausted their fuel.
Although many “red giant” stars may have been ordinary stars like our Sun, as they die they swell up in size, become much cooler, and are much more luminous then they were during the majority of their stellar life.
There will appear signs in the sun, moon and stars;
and on earth, nations will be in anxiety and Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror;
bewilderment at the sound and surge of the sea. then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part;
as people faint with fear at the prospect of what is then even as I am fully known.
overtaking the world; for the powers in heaven will 1 Corinthians 13:12
be shaken. Luke 21:25-26
The image of these delicate filaments are actually sheets of debris from a stellar explosion in a neighboring galaxy.
Denoted N 49, or DEM L 190, this remnant is from a massive star that died in a supernova blast whose light would have reached Earth thousands of years ago. This filamentary material will eventually be recycled into building new generations of stars. Our own Sun and planets are constructed from similar debris of supernovae that exploded in the Milky Way billions of years ago.
This seemingly delicate structure also harbors a very powerful spinning neutron star that may be the central remnant
from the initial blast. It is quite common for the core of an exploded supernova star to become a spinning neutron star (also called a pulsar – because of the regular pulses of energy from the rotational spin) after the immediate shedding of the star’s outer layers. In the case of N 49, not only is the neutron star spinning at a rate of once every 8 seconds, it also has a super-strong magnetic field a thousand trillion times stronger than Earth’s magnetic field. This places this star into the exclusive class of objects called “magnetars.”
“Image on right”
“Hubble takes a close-up view of a Reflection Nebula in Orion, NGC 1999
NGC 1999 is an example of a reflection nebula. A reflection nebula shines only because the light from an embedded source illuminates its dust; the nebula does not emit any visible light of its own. NGC 1999 lies close to the famous Orion Nebula, about 1,500 light-years from Earth, in a region of our Milky Way galaxy where new stars are being formed actively.
The NGC 1999 nebula is illuminated by a bright, recently formed star, visible in the Hubble photo just to the left of center. This star is cataloged as V380 Orionis, and its white color is due to its high surface temperature of about 10,000 degrees Celsius (nearly twice that of our own Sun). Its mass is estimated to be 3.5 times that of the Sun. The star is so young that it is still surrounded by a cloud of material left over from its formation, here seen as the NGC 1999 reflection nebula.
Every good and perfect gift is from above,
coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights,
who does not change like shifting shadows. James 1:17
“Image on left”
Hubble Mosaic of the Majestic Sombrero Galaxy NASA’s Hubble has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe’s most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat.
At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth.
In 1912, astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered that the hat-like object appeared to be rushing away from us at 700 miles per second. This enormous velocity offered some of the earliest clues that the Sombrero was really another galaxy, and that the universe was expanding in all directions.
(An angel speaking to Zechariah, saying)
For the Lord of Hosts has sent me on a glorious mission to the nations that plundered you,
and this is what He says;
“Anyone who injuries you (Israel) injuries the very pupil of My eye. Zech 2:7-8
“Image Above”
NGC 3132 is a striking example of a planetary nebula.
This expanding cloud of gas, surrounding a dying star, is known to amateur astronomers in the
southern hemisphere as the “Eight-Burst” or the “Southern Ring” Nebula.
The name “planetary nebula” refers only to the round shape that many of these objects show when examined through a small visual telescope. In reality, these nebulae have little or nothing to do with planets, but are instead huge shells of gas ejected by stars as they near the ends of their lifetimes. NGC 3132 is nearly half a light year in diameter, and at a distance of about 2000 light years is one of the nearer known planetary nebulae. The gases are expanding away from the central star at a speed of 9 miles per second.
This image, captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, clearly shows two stars near the center of the nebula, a bright white one, and an adjacent, fainter companion to its upper right. (A third, unrelated star lies near the edge of the nebula.) The faint partner is actually the star that has ejected the nebula.
This star is now smaller than our own Sun, but extremely hot. The flood of ultraviolet radiation from its surface makes the surrounding gases glow through fluorescence. The brighter star is in an earlier stage of stellar evolution, but in the future it will probably eject its own planetary nebula.
“How blessed is the man who perseveres through temptation!
For after he has passed the test, he will receive as his “crown the Life”
which God has promised to those who love Him. James 1:12
“A young Pulsar shows it’s hand”
PSR 1509-58
A small, dense object only twelve miles in diameter is responsible for this beautiful X-ray nebula that spans 150 light years. At the center of this image made by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is a very young and powerful pulsar, known as PSR B1509-58, or B1509 for short.
The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star which is spewing energy out into the space
around it to create complex and intriguing structures, including one that resembles a large cosmic hand. Astronomers think that B1509 is about 1700 years old and is located about 17,000 light years away.
Neutron stars are created when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse. B1509 is spinning completely around almost 7 times every second and is releasing energy into its environment at a prodigious rate – presumably because it has an intense magnetic field at its surface, estimated to be 15 trillion times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.
The combination of rapid rotation and ultra-strong magnetic field makes B1509 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the Galaxy. This generator drives an energetic wind of electrons and ions away from the neutron star. As the electrons move through the magnetized nebula, they radiate away their energy and create the elaborate nebula seen by Chandra.
For this is what the Lord of Hosts says; “It won’t be long before one more time I will shake the heavensand the earth, the sea and the dry land; and I will shake all the nations, so that the treasures of all the nations will flow in; and I will fill this house (Israel) with glory,” says the Lord of Hosts. Haggai 2:6-7
“the universe also continues in motion.”
however God has made a way for man
to observe His creation and to realize that “HE IS”
We are about to become witnesses of “the great signs” that will soon take place in the heavens!
Interesting Update..
The universe may glitter with far more stars than previously imagined. A new study suggests there are a mind-blowing 300 sextillion of them, or three times as many as scientists previously calculated. That is a 3 followed by 23 zeros. Or 3 trillion times 100 billion.
Some of those galaxies the elliptical ones, which account for about a third of all galaxies have as many as 1 trillion to 10 trillion stars, not a measly 100 billion. When the numbers were crunched, they found that it tripled the estimate of stars in the universe from 100 sextillion to 300 sextillion.
Now the “coincidental” part of all of this was when they looked up how many cells are in the average human body — 50 trillion or so — and multiplied that by the 6 billion people on Earth. And he came up with about 300 sextillion.
So the number of stars in the universe “is equal to all the cells in the humans on Earth.