It’s a famous composite photograph, titled “The Pale Blue Dot,” taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft. The speck of dust in the beam of light is the Earth.

We are tinier than specks of dust.

That is the Whirlpool Galaxy (the big one on the left, at least). Isn’t it breathtaking? It looks like marble. The Hubble Spacecraft site titles this picture, “Out of this Whirl.” Cute.

Apparently you can see this galaxy with binoculars!

I tried to figure out how big it was. Wikipedia says, “it can be inferred that M51’s bright circular disk has a radius of about 38,000 light-years. Its mass is estimated to be 160 billion solar masses.” I don’t really understand what that means.

The earth is 8 light-minutes away from the sun, if that helps.

Below is the center of the Whirlpool Galaxy. The “x-structure” hides a black hole from the view of the earth, and two radiating cones of light come out of it.

Wow. I wonder how close the Hubble got to that, and what it’s like in the center!

These are small representations of a universe that we can’t measure. And God is bigger than all of it.

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. Psalm 33:6

I’m in awe that any of my prayers has ever been answered or that I have ever sensed any communication from God at all.

And yet even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Matthew 10:30

There’s an observatory not far from our house where people can hook up their cameras and photograph certain planets and galaxies, like beautiful Andromeda:

Someday I’d like to do that.

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19:1-4




Thanks to this Louie Giglio video, and a couple others like it, for the perspective.