I love astronomy! I cannot watch enough astronomy videos on YouTube. I enjoy watching the Boring Space and Calm Space YouTube channels, among several other channels. I listen to them each night while I sleep. The more I learn about God's amazing gigantic universe, the smaller and more humble I feel. Psalms 8:3-4, “When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” As amazed as David was in the Old Testament, he had no idea how big the universe really is!
By working backwards, scientists concluded that since the universe is ever expanding, there must have been a “Big Bang” that started it all 13.8 billion years ago. I don't think they should speak assertively as if a Big Bang is a fact, simply because no one truly knows. It does make some sense, but then again, what would have existed before the Big Bang? And what would have caused the Big Bang, if there is no divine Creator as 100% of official heathen science sources assume (NASA, National Geographic, et cetera). The heathen world by default attempts to explain the origin and workings of the universe upon the biased assumption that God does not exist. If there was a so-called "Big Bang," God made it happen!!!
God is truly more than amazing!!! The nearest star to Earth, other than our Sun, is Proxima Centauri, which is located about 4.24 light-years away. That is approximately 25 trillion miles away! Great fluffy biscuits in the morning! It would take over 793,000 years to count to 25 trillion if you counted one number per second. This estimate is based on the fact that counting to one trillion takes about 31,710 years. And of course, there's absolutely no way that you could count those very long numbers in just one second. And that's if you could humanly count for 24 hours a day without ever sleeping or taking or break, which is impossible. So, realistically, it would take someone at least 25 million years to count to 25 trillion. That just gives you some idea of how far away Alpha Centauri is.
While the sun's visible surface—the photosphere—is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its upper atmosphere has temperatures in the millions of degrees. It's a large temperature differential with still little scientific explanation.
Our Amazing Planets
Our solar system has eight planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, plus five officially recognized dwarf planets including Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake, and Eris. These objects orbit the Sun, are round due to their own gravity, but have not cleared their orbits of other debris. Jupiter is the largest planet and could fit 1,000 Earths inside if it were hollow, while Mercury is the smallest and closest to the Sun.
I love learning about the planets in our own Solar System. Except for the Earth, the planets are named after gods from Roman and Greek mythology. With the exception of Neptune and Uranus the other 6 planets can be seen unaided and all 8 are visible with a small telescope or binoculars.
Mercury is the most minor planet in the solar system and is closest to the sun. Due to its proximity, it experiences extreme temperature fluctuations. During the day, temperatures can reach up to 800 degrees Fahrenheit; at night, they can drop to -290 degrees Fahrenheit. This temperature difference is due to the planet’s lack of atmosphere and slow rotation. That's an astounding temperature differential between day and night of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Venus has a surface air pressure of 1,200 psi (pounds per square inch). The earth's pressure at sea level is only 14.7 psi. Venus' atmosphere is composed of sulfuric acid and carbon dioxide, giving it a Greenhouse Effect (trapping the sun's rays) that raises the planet's surface temperature to a shocking 900° F. That's twice as hot as your kitchen oven on its highest setting! Russian probes landing on Venus were annihilated within 90 minutes!
Venus spins in the opposite direction compared to most planets, including Earth, which is known as retrograde rotation. This means the sun rises in the west and sets in the east on Venus. Venus rotates very slowly, taking about 243 earth days to complete one rotation on its axis, which is equivalent to a rotational speed of approximately 4 mph. However, its thick atmosphere moves much faster, at around 224 mph. The Earth rotates on its axis once every 24 hours. Venus has no moons.
The planet Saturn has 292 confirmed moons, making it the planet with the most moons in the Solar System. These moons vary greatly in size and characteristics, with Titan being the largest and notable for its thick atmosphere. Saturn is known as a gas giant, having no solid surface. If you were to fall with a parachute on Saturn, you'd just keep falling and falling as the heat and pressure increased until you were destroyed.
Saturn's atmosphere is primarily composed of 96.3% hydrogen and 3.25% helium, with trace amounts of other gases like methane and ammonia. It features a banded structure and is known for its dynamic weather patterns, including massive storms and a unique hexagonal cloud formation at the north pole.
The lightning on Saturn is 10,000 times more powerful than on Earth. Saturn's northern hemisphere has a raging six-sided storm nicknamed "the hexagon." This hexagon, a towering multilayered storm, has been there for decades, if not hundreds of years. The strange storm was discovered in the 1980s.
When I was growing up there were nine planets, but The International Astronomical Union (IAU) decided to reclassify Pluto as a dwarf planet in 2006, leaving us today with only right planets. This decision was based on new criteria that Pluto did not meet, specifically that it had not cleared its neighboring region of other objects. But there are many scientists who think that Pluto should be reinstated as a planet.
Whereas it takes a little over 8 minutes for the sun's light to reach the Earth, it requires more than 4 hours for the sun's light to reach the planet Neptune. Uranus spins on its side.
Our Milky Way Galaxy is shaped like a giant disk and takes 100,000 light-years (literally traveling 182,282 miles per second, which is 670 million mph, for 1,000 years) to cross lengthwise. That's 600 trillion miles!
Compared to Earth's peaceful moon, Jupiter's moon Io may come as a surprise. The Jovian moon has hundreds of volcanoes and is considered the most active moon in the solar system, sending plumes of sulfur up to 190 miles (300 kilometers) into its atmosphere. Io is the innermost and most volcanically active moon of Jupiter, featuring over 400 active volcanoes and a surface constantly reshaped by volcanic activity. It orbits Jupiter at an average distance of about 262,000 miles and is slightly larger than Earth's Moon.
Neptune is roughly 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, and it gets correspondingly less heat and light. But it radiates far more heat than it's taking in and has far more activity in its atmosphere than planetary scientists would suspect, especially compared to nearby Uranus. This is still an unsolved mystery for astronomers. Neptune's winds reach mind boggling speeds of over 1,500 mph.
Earth has several bands of magnetically trapped, highly energetic charged particles surrounding our planet, known as the Van Allen belts (named after the discoverer of the phenomenon) . In outer space, if unprotected, your body's DNA would be destroyed from the sun's dangerous rays. God made the Earth's atmosphere to protect all life.
The Intriguing Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
Unlike the Hubble and James Webb telescopes which can only focus on very small areas of space at a time, the Nancy Grace Roman Telescope will be able to focus on large areas. So large in fact, that its 300 megapixel camera would require 3,000 digital television screens to show just one image. These three telescopes working together will exponentially discover and reveal new secrets about God's great handiwork. Lord willing, I cannot wait for the new discoveries! God's greatness is truly unsearchable!
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