God spoke the stars into existence.
Right in the center of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, where the sun is merely a tiny speck, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope discovered the above image that looks similar to a cross. Dr. Holland Ford of Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope and Science Institute states that this image “marks the exact position of the nuclear black hole.” According to NASA,
This image of the core of the nearby spiral galaxy M51, . . . [reveals a cross] silhouetted across the galaxy’s nucleus. The “X” [cross] is due to absorption by dust and marks the exact position of a black hole which may have a mass equivalent to one-million stars like the sun. The darkest bar may be an edge-on dust ring which is 100 light-years in diameter. The edge-on torus not only hides the black hole and accretion disk from being viewed directly from earth, but also determines the axis of a jet of high-speed plasma and confines radiation from the accretion disk to a pair of oppositely directed cones of light, which ionize gas caught in their beam. The second bar of the “X” could be a second disk seen edge on, or possibly rotating gas and dust in MS1 intersecting with the jets and ionization cones.
The size of the image is 1100 light-years.
Louie Giglio explains this discovery well here. You might enjoy taking a few minutes to listen to this interesting YouTube video of various sounds in space. Maybe you’d be interested in listening to Louie Giglio’s Stars and Whales where, with a bit of imagination, you can hear the whales singing How Great is Our God.
My Favorite Homework Ever
I attended Multnomah School of the Bible in the 1970s. Mr. Needham was one of my teachers. One day he gave us what has become my all-time favorite homework assignment: Take 15 minutes one evening to lay under the stars and reflect on how awesome God is. I’d like to share this assignment with you. If you choose to do it, consider the question, “How do the heavens bring you to worship God?”
Until next week, may the Lord richly bless and keep you.