Astronomy Picture of the Day - Earthset with an iPhone

Explanation: What does it mean for the Earth to set? Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman gave us another spectacular view of Earth from their historic flyby of the Moon. Commander Wiseman's video, taken with an iPhone at 8x zoom, shows our entire planet gradually blocked from view by the Moon. On the Earth, the 24-hour planetary rotation causes the Sun to set below your horizon every night. However, on Artemis II the Earthset was caused not by the Moon’s rotation but by the spacecraft moving behind the Moon (at about 55 seconds in this video). Once rare, views of Earth are now taken many times a day from many spacecraft, including NASA’s SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography) satellite tracking freshwater resources and USGS Landsat 8 and 9 satellites supporting water management for farmers, for example. Space agencies around our home planet now work together to provide unique and ever-improving views of our Earth.

Today’s APOD (https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2604/noirlab2610c.jpg)
gives a computation by astronomers showing the density of constellations as seen from our vantage point. The possible conclusions of this description of the picture they post is to me silly. First of course I am not an astronomer, but I think I have enough sense to realize that the Milky Way is not the center of the universe, the big bang if it happened did not happen in our neighborhood. No, this observation just shows our inability to see, especially to see the smaller, less bright constellations the farther away they are to eventually not even being able to see large bright constellations that are more than 14 billion light years away. Every new more powerful telescope we sent into space allows us to see farther and farther out away from us. The concept that the universe as we know it is 14 billion years old to me, absurd. We simply can’t see farther back than that. When the Webb telescope was put on line some of the first deep field images came back with constellations, very large, developed and bright constellations over a billion light years farther away than we thought possible.

I’m just an old man, astronomy is just a little hobby but seeing the density near us and postulating that there is no way we are at the center of the densest part of the universe I suspect that the universe is just as dense 14 billion years away as it is in our own neighborhood.

Now perhaps this will ruin my credibility but I believe in the Christian God who has created worlds without end, not in a God who only created a lot of worlds near us.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.