Happy Sweet Sixteen Galaxy (M82)
The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds, and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions.
Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy. The resulting huge concentration of young stars carved into the gas and dust at the galaxy's center. The fierce galactic superwind generated from these stars compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars.
In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters. These, in turn, congregate by the dozens to make the bright patches, or "starburst clumps," in the central parts of M82. The clusters in the clumps can only be distinguished in the sharp Hubble images. Most of the pale, white objects sprinkled around the body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters about 20 light-years across and contain up to a million stars.
The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. The starburst then will subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years.
Located 12 million light-years away, M82 appears high in the northern spring sky in the direction of the constellation Ursa Major, the Great Bear. It is also called the "Cigar Galaxy" because of the elliptical shape produced by the oblique tilt of its starry disk relative to our line of sight.
This galaxy is also 28,000 light years wide.
If you have not studied your science lately, here are some facts:
Light year: A unit of measurement for the distance that light travels in one year, which is 5,878,786,100,000 miles. (If you do not understand- that is almost 6 TRILLION miles!)
That galaxy pictured above is 12 million miles x 6 billion miles away! That is a lot of zeros... if I did my math right it would be:
74,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 MILES from little earth to Happy Sweet Sixteen Galaxy!
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Genesis 1:1
Who has measured the waters
in the hollow of his hand,
or with the breadth of his hand
marked off the heavens?
Who has held the dust
of the earth in a basket,
or weighed the mountains
on the scales
and the hills in a balance?
Isaiah 40:12
And I bet you thought your problems were big!
God, in the form of a human, Jesus, stepped INTO His creation, a teeny tiny speck of dust called Earth, and DIED to redeem humanity. Jesus, Creator of the universe, displayed the glory of God in His death and proclaimed God majestic in His resurrection!
1 Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, 2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. 3 He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. Hebrews 1:1-4
Never again doubt God's love for you. God spoke and the galaxies, trillions of them, appeared. Never doubt God's power. Our sun is a speck in our galaxy and nothing in comparison to other stars. Never worry. The heavens tell of the glory of God. Never fret over evil on earth. God is in control of the universe. Lay aside fears.
You are but a vapor.
Instead, stand to your feet OR fall flat on your face in reverence, awe and praise before the God who alone is worthy. Instead, shout to the nations that He alone is God. Tell the people that their foolish ideas, philosophies, worries, cares and good works are NOTHING, literally, in relation to the stars, nebulas, black holes, solar systems and galaxies. And NOTHING in perpective to their Creator, who with the WORD of His mouth said, "Let there BE!"
And there was.
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