A cluster containing 25-30 stars, at a distance of 3,000 light years, in the constellation Ophiuchus. Note two interesting points:
First, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, is currently 128 astronomical units from the Sun (a little over 3 times the distance from the Sun to Pluto). It is the farthest man-made object in the universe. It is traveling in the general direction of this cluster at a million miles per day in the dark, cold abyss of interstellar space, where it is barely above absolute zero, with our Sun a bright point of light some 12 billion miles away, and the Earth a distant memory. As you look at it, just image that somewhere, between Earth and these stars is a tiny, imperceptible vestige of our planet.
Second, at a distance of 3,000 light years, the light you are seeing from these stars left on their cosmic journey at the time of King David's reign in Israel, a thousand years before the birth of his descendant, Jesus of Nazareth.
Star Cluster NGC 6633 in Ophiuchus
Date Taken:May 30, 2014
Location Taken:New Mexico Skies Observatory, Mayhill, NM
Conditions of Location: Equipment Used:Planewave 17" corrected Dall-Kirkham telescope, FLI PL6303E camera
Processing Used:8 x 2 minute images in LRGB for a total exposure of 64 minutes, processed in Maxim DL and Photoshop.
Distance from Location:3,000 light years
Constellation:Ophiuchus
Other Link:
Richard – I have thought about your astronomic photos many times, wondering (among other things) why He elected to show Himself to us in this manner. The related time periods are so very far beyond the scale of a human lifetime that any or all of us reflecting on and theorizing about the age and evolution of the contents of the night sky seems like a mayfly trying to apprehend the age and power and design involved in the entire supposed lifetime, and past and future, of his species. The related distances are likewise so very far beyond the experience of any human that one of us reflecting on and theorizing about the scale of the contents of the night sky seems like a man born and living and dying in a cave being asked to explain and control and replicate all reality. The innumerable and impenetrable related forces are likewise so very far beyond ‘our poor power’ that they defy our posturing suppositions and are called e.g. dark energy and dark matter, presumptuously implying we may fully understand them soon. More to the point, be the subject subatomic and microscopic or cosmic and telescopic, we may be a giddy and imaginative audience, but by any honest test any or all of us do not definitively affect the processes or purposes we witness – – unless our physical lives are subsumed in His spiritual life. The transcendent God of the new heaven and the new earth will welcome those of us who have previously chosen to come to Him as His humble and dependent children. Accordingly, my first guess regarding why you and I have a night sky full of glistening marvels is because we must see and humbly recognize – with certainty – that He is our God and we are not. Though most men may assume the breathtaking spectacle of our speck of dust hurtling through virtually limitless space among essentially inexplicable pageantry is mindless happenstance, for the thoughtful and candid spectators the show is intimate and warming and reassuring, for He clearly can and will do all He promised us…as He planned well before any light from the Ophiuchus constellation left to eventually shine on King David?