Unbelievably beautiful! Tonight (Monday, Dec. 1, 2008) the moon, Venus and Jupiter form a close triangle in the rich black sky... like jewels on velvet. This sight will not reoccur until Nov. 18, 2052. Breathtaking!
Is there anything more awesome than the our sky... our universe? The unbelievable enormity. Our earth is so big that it can host 7 billion people and counting. And even though oceans and seas cover two-thirds of its surface, the open space we can see sometimes makes one wonder where all the people are. Yet, in the scheme of things, we are so small that we are almost insignificant in the scale of it all.
One light second is 192,000 miles... the time it takes light to travel that distance. Our universe is estimated to be 4 to 5 billion light years across. That is, 192,000 miles x 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hour x 365 days x 4 to 5 billion years!
There are about 10 billion stars in the average galaxy, say the astronomers. They estimate 10 billion galaxies in the universe. So how many does that make? the easy answer is 100 billion billion stars bigger than our earth. And, percentage-wise, our eyes see almost none of them!
How can that be? I am so humbled.
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