The Heavens Declare the Glory of God

I've just come in from a two-hour star-gazing episode with a friend. Even though it's a lovely windless night of 5 degrees Celsius, we were cold. My neck was cold (of course, we've already put away all our scarves and mitts.)

We set up the telescope and had a beautiful view of the crescent moon with its many craters in high relief.

We saw some double stars and picked out the constellations we know. I always try to spot something new. Tonight we worked on Draco, but we were too close to town light to see it all clearly.

There are so many stars. I never tire of looking at them. Well, my neck gets tired from bending my head back to look up, but I don't tire of gazing at the sky. I love to see that handful of stardust we call the Milky Way. The Chinese call it the Silver River, I'm told.

The sky charts make it seem so easy, with all those lines connecting the dots of the stars into shapes: eagle, crown, bear, dog, a woman on a chair. But they are flat, two-dimensional. Looking through the telescope gives a small glimpse of the three-dimensionality of the sky. There is depth there; it goes on and on and on.

Beautiful Saviour, Bright and Morning Star, how glorious is your name!

Looking for the Coat Hanger

I went out last night around 9:30 and drove five minutes north of town to a dark area where the light pollution from the city was minimal. I pulled off the road and let my eyes become accustomed to the dark for a few minutes. Then I looked up at the heavens.

It was a breath-taking, glorious sight. The Milky Way meandered across the sky with such a dense cloud of stars that it was difficult to pick out the constellations against that backdrop. The stars of the Summer Triangle, easily visible from my back deck in town as the brightest stars in the southern sky, were lost among the dazzling array of other stars. I was looking for Brocchi's Cluster, commonly called the Coat Hanger because its ten stars are arranged in the shape of an upside-down coat hanger. It's found about a third of the way along a line joining Altair and Vega, two of the stars of the Summer Triangle.

I looked but couldn't isolate the cluster because of the brilliant mass of stars vying for my attention. I'm going to look again, this time with binoculars.

The best thing about last night's outing was that I was with two international students, both from Colombia. They were amazed at the sight of the Milky Way, which they had never seen before. They spotted Jupiter, bright in the southern sky, dipping below the horizon during the hour we were out. They found the Pleiades, which in Spanish is called the Rosario because of its resemblance to a string of rosary beads. Each of the students saw a "falling star." In addition, we saw a satellite plodding its path through the dark night sky.

Most enjoyable to me was the excitement in their voices. Viviana pointed out to Andrea the double star in the handle of the Big Dipper. They giggled and laughed and exclaimed. A rush of words in Spanish from one or the other clarified or asked a question.

They marvelled when I told them that God calls each star by name: "He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names" (Psalm 147:4). It is a demonstration of God's greatness and His infinite wisdom.

I just enjoyed their enjoying.