It’s easy to b overwhelmed aby everything around us: the housing crisis, the warming climate, Presidential elections, Ukraine, Gaza, to name just a few, so at times, it can be helpful to look beyond our earth into the sky and the worlds beyond.
Using the Webb telescope, astronomers have discovered at least six celestial bodies within a cosmic cloud. Called rogue worlds, these objects are larger than Jupiter, the largest planet in our universe, smaller than the many universes beyond us. The old Hubble pictures showed us the cosmic cloud; the Webb photos show us what’s inside.
More than a thousand light years from Earth, these celestial bodies, some strangely shaped, move about in strange orbits around their stars. As the celestial dust begins to morph into planetary-like bodies, it’s as if God is still creating
Prayer for the Day
Gazing into the heavens, we marvel at what we see,
The beauty of the millions of stars and moon at night;
Overwhelmed by the grandeur of the skies you created,
We wonder what lies beyond our own universe.
Sheltered in the shadow of the worlds around us,
You have made us sentient being, O God.
In the name of the One who helps us in wonder,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We are probing the very limits of the star forming process. If you have an object that looks like a young Jupiter, is it possible that it could have become a star under the right conditions? This is important context for understanding both star and planet formation.
Adam Langeveld, astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins
Whenever we look in nature, we can see the spiral curling forms in an unfurling fern, the snail, the nautilus shell, the hurricane, the stirred cup of coffee, the water that swirls out of a wash bowl. We shouldn’t be surprised to see spirals swirling in the great star systems whirling in space. Yet they remain a great, intriguing question.
Cecilia Payne-Gapsockhin, British astronomer, astrophysicist (1900-1979)
The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament declares God’s handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard,
Yet their voices goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of worlds.
Psalm 19: 1-4