I'm a confessed Book-a-Holic. Only my finances and the local libraries (if I can be patient - sometimes I can't) curb my intense love for new books of many different genres. At times, I let friends and family shop bookstores and I wait outside so I don't have to say, "NO!!", to myself. Sigh!
A recent mail brochure offered a bargain book sale plus FREE shipping from National Geographic Society. And "Hubble: Imaging Space and Time" by David Devorkin & Robert W. Smith, was on sale! I couldn't pass it up and now own the most amazing book in my large collection.
To refresh your memory about my trip to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in June, please visit a prior posting on this blog, "Through the Heavens. . .", June 14, 2013, wherein I chronicle the fabulous 3-D Imax movie showing Hubble telescope photos.
"Hubble" tells the story of the Hubble telescope, functioning well in space, but the best part, as far as I'm concerned, is the many, large color photos of faraway galaxies, nebulas, star fields and odd findings such as "fingers of gas and dust in Eagle Nebula " (p.138).
What is seen through this telescope has already happened. A two-page photo of "Remains of a supernova in Constellation Cassiopeia" shows disorganized groups of stars and gasses. The many different colors and sizes of stars appear at random intervals. The caption explains, "Around 1667, when Isaac Newton was building the first successful reflecting telescope, light from a supernova reached Earth. The star had actually exploded some 10,000 years earlier, and its light had been traveling toward us ever since. The remains of that fantastically violent event make up the youngest supernova remains known in our Milky Way galaxy and are called Cassiopeia A. In an optical telescope, Cassiopeia A appears faint and extends for about ten light-years, but to a radio telescoope it's the second brightest source of radio waves in the sky (after our own sun). Under Hubble's scrutiny, it reveals an intricate array of gaseous streamers, with the different colors in the image representing the glowing presence of different chemical elements. The reds, for example, are rich in sulfur and the dark blue streamers are richest in oxygen" (pp. 94-95).
As I slowly page through "Hubble," I find myself transported through space, enjoying the same feeling I experienced while viewing the 3-D Imax last month. So many findings new to me are presented. A series of photos reveal a 'variable star!' "About 20,000 light years from Earth is the variable star known as V838 Monocerotis, with the V838 indicating it is the 838th variable star in the faint constellation Monoceros. In January 2002, the star suddenly increased in brightness to become briefly 600,000 times more luminous than our sun." (p. 99). At first, astronomers thought the star had exploded but months later, the cosmic dust cleared somewhat and revealed a much larger red star.
There are numbers on the photos indicating the object's distance from Earth. "Spiral Galaxy NGC 4414" was shown in 1999 to be "62,000,000 light-years" distant. A light-year is the distance traveled by light in one year, approximately 6 trillion miles. I don't even know what the name of the product of 62 million light-years times 6 trillion miles would be called! Can anyone alive or yet to be born comprehend that distance?
To view photos from the Hubble Telescope, just Google "Hubble Photos." Enjoy!
As the evening progressed and I continued my journey, I became aware of new feelings of awe and reverence. Praise you, God, for all the wonders of the Universe! I remembered my Philosophy Course, freshman year, 1961, at the University of Dayton, Ohio. We explored "Proofs for the Existence of God." The first proof is "Order in the Universe." This made sense to me then and makes more sense to me now that so much more is known about the far reaches of space. I cannot help but believe that in this immensity of which we humans are only an infantesimal part, there had to be a Supreme Being of Intelligence who directly created this. Not only was the Universe created by a Supreme Being, I believe it must have been created out of an unfanthomable LOVE for us humans!
Prediction: this wonderful book won't find its way to a bookshelf for a long, long time!
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