God's Amazing Constellations

Psalm 147:4, “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.”

I love astronomy. It's one of my hobbies. God's creative handiwork is more than amazing!

The Perseids meteor shower peaks in mid-August, with the peak night on 12–13 August and activity running about July 17th to August 24th. During the peak, the rate can reach up to around 150 meteors per hour (depending on location and conditions). I laid outside at 9 pm on August 12th for about 30 minutes, and then again after midnight around 1:30 am on August 13th for another half hour, watching for meteors. I saw a few slow moving shooting stars. 

Here's a quick astronomy lesson:

• Asteroids are rocks moving through space.
• Meteors are space rocks that have entered into earth's atmosphere.
• Meteorites are space rocks that survived entry and have hit the earth.

When I lived on Guam, where there is little light from the island to interfere with the view, I often saw shooting stars (meteors) in the night sky. Most move super fast across the sky.

The other evening during the meteor shower, I focused on the constellation Pegasus, simply because it was right in front of me as I laid in my lawn chair. I use a helpful program called SkyView, which tells me the distance of each individual star in light-years. I purchased the full-functioning program, which costs less than a one time $5 fee. 

Pegasus is a constellation in the northern sky, named after the winged horse from Greek mythology. It is one of the 88 officially recognized constellations and is best known for the Great Square of Pegasus, which is formed by four bright stars. The constellation was upside down like this as I observed it. ...

The star Enif in the horse's mouth of the Pegasus constellation is 690 light-years from earth, which is a shocking 4,068,396,226,415,094 miles away! That's four quadrillion miles from earth! And I was laying in my backyard in my lawn chair looking at it. Wow!

The light that I was seeing started its long journey 690 years ago in 1336 AD. Light travels at 670 million mph. In 1336 AD, significant events happened, included the mass suicide of 4,000 defenders in Pilėnai, Lithuania to avoid capture by the Teutonic Knights, and the founding of the Vijayanagara Empire in South India by brothers Harihara and Bukka Raya. Additionally, the Italian poet Petrarch claimed to be the first to ascend Mount Ventoux. The light emitted from the star Enif took 690 years travelling at 670 million mph to reach my eyes this week. Wow!

I used to ignorantly think that all of the stars in a particular constellation were all close neighbours. Boy was I way wrong! Take for example the star 1 Peg in Pegasus, which is directly above Enif and slightly to the right, which is located 156 light-years from earth, 917,065,558,216,643 Miles. That's nearly one quadrillion miles! By the way, I use this handy-dandy web page to convert light-years to miles.

God is so astounding! And then I saw star Peg 9 just above Enif, which is 927 light-years from earth, or 5,449,485,720,941,204 Miles. Good night, that's over 5 quadrillion miles away. And I was looking at it in my backyard from Pensacola. As you can clearly see, the stars which comprise the constellations are often quadrillions of years apart in distance from each other. Remember, a “light-year” is a measurement of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in one year.

And just to amaze you further dear reader, the next time that you gaze up into the evening sky, remember that the closest star to the earth (after our own sun which is 93 million miles away), is a shocking 4.24 light-years away, or 25 trillion miles from earth! That star is Alpha Centauri. That's right, the nearest star in the night sky is at least 25,000,000,000,000 miles away. Most of the stars we see in the night sky are quadrillions of miles away.

And another interesting fact to remember is that every star you can see with the naked human eye is contained within our own Milky Way Galaxy. With the naked eye humans cannot see stars in other galaxies. And there are at least TWO TRILLION galaxies in the known universe! 

The Andromeda Galaxy can be seen with the unaided eye on clear, dark nights as a faint, fuzzy smudge between the constellations Andromeda and Cassiopeia. It is the most distant object visible to the naked eye, located about 2.5 million light-years away. Are you ready for this? The Andromeda Galaxy is a shocking 14.7 quintillion miles away from earth! And it is still possible to see it at the right time in the right place.

NASA's astronomers now tell us there are at least 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the know universe. That's one septillion stars!!! I need to go take a long walk. Wowza!

Psalm 147:4, “He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names.”

Did you know that it would take someone 31,710 years just to count to one trillion? It's true. If you counted one number every second without stopping, it would take you 31,710 years to count to one trillion. No human has ever done it, and no human ever will. But the inspired Holy Bible says God knows the exact number of stars, and He calls each star by their unique individual name. Our faithful, good, merciful and omnipotent Creator is truly more than amazing! Psalm 145:3, “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; and his greatness is unsearchable.”