Posted on 08/16/2013 10:04:31 AM PDT by LibWhacker
A close-up view of the central bulge of the Milky Way Galaxy, partially obscured by a dark jagged swath of intervening gas and dust. Magnifico!
How Great Thou Art;
Verse 1:
O Lord my God! When I in awesome wonder
Consider all the works Thy hand hath made.
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder,
Thy power throughout the universe displayed.
Refrain:
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee;
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God, to Thee:
How great Thou art, how great Thou art!
Verse 2:
When through the woods and forest glades I wander
And hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees;
When I look down from lofty mountain grandeur
And hear the brook and feel the gentle breeze:
(Repeat Refrain.)
Verse 3:
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing,
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in;
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin:
(Repeat Refrain.)
Verse 4:
When Christ shall come with shout of acclamation
And take me home, what joy shall fill my heart!
Then I shall bow in humble adoration,
And there proclaim, my God, how great Thou art!
(Repeat Refrain.)
Cool beans.
Now why doesn’t my backyard in NJ look like that???????
...and some say we are alone in the Universe...that’s impossible!
lol
When I go outside at night, I can only see a couple of hundred stars, tops. No Milky Way, no Andromeda, pretty sad. Gotta get back to the country someday real soon!
I’m in Hunterdon County...whats left of “country in NJ”.
5.56mm
One of these days I am going to make a trip to one of those ever shrinking “dark sky” areas where I can, like this picture, take in the glories of God’s Heaven! We see so little of it in our everyday lives that I think it is one of the reasons we have lost our sense of proportion in relation to the universe and our sense of reverence for the Creator. It is easy to forget and dismiss when you never have to see the infinite.
The road to infinity.
If we are part of the Milky Way, how do we “see” the Milky Way?
Same way we can see much of the Solar System that Earth is a part of.
You just can't see 100% of it at any one moment or direction.
For a smaller scale analogy, let's say you are part of a big crowd on the street.
You can see some of it in front of you, but a lot of it is behind you....and much of the crowd is hidden by people who block your view.
.
bttt
I live in the middle of a very dark area. Lately I have been playing with some Generation 3+ night vision equipment and one clear night I pointed it up at the heavens. Wow. You have no idea how much more there is up there. And satellites! I was seeing them mostly headed north every few minutes. Sometimes one would go south on the same track. Then a big reddish one came west to east.
When I was Active Duty Navy and out to Sea you could see Untold numbers of stars and other things when the ship went to “Darken Ship” (usually after 0100).
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