Blowin' in the Wind: The Dimensions of the Milky Way

("Blowin’ in the Wind" is a periodic feature on my blog consisting of an assortment of nature writings – hymns, songs, excerpts, prayers, Bible readings, poems or other things – pieces I have not written but that inspire me or give me joy. I trust they’ll do the same for you.)

Gail and I will be heading soon to the hinterland of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where a highlight we always enjoy while there are its night skies. Occasionally we are treated to some fantastic views of the aurora borealis, the northern lights. But each and every single night that is clear we’re given fantastic views of the cosmos, and I often find myself sitting long with a star map and a pair of binoculars on the end of the dock. Star clusters, nebulae and distant galaxies are not difficult to spot with binocs if one knows where to look, but they’re not my favorite sight. Besides, these are usually ‘pinpointed’ objects, where one does not get a sense of the sky’s awesome vastness, or its almost dizzying three-dimensionality. My favorite sky view? Taking a long look at the Milky Way. It almost always takes my breath away, giving me a feeling of space-flight while I’m at it.

The Milky Way is best seen without binoculars to get this sensation, though a look through field glasses or a telescope always presents an absolutely stunning array of stars not visible even to the best naked eye. After evening twilight in the U.P. in mid-August, the Milky Way runs diagonally in a fairly straight line from the northeast down to the southwest, picking up great constellations along the way like Cassiopeia, Cygnus, Lyra, Aquila, Sagittarius and Scorpio, all rotating clockwise as the night progresses. And the ‘line?’ That is because we are actually looking out ‘sideways’ through our spiral galaxy’s flattened disk, and the concentration of stars presents itself to us as a wispy, cloudy line. One is usually unable to see it from even small cities, with its artificial light typically fading away both the sky’s blackness and the Milky Way’s lightness at the same time.

One can easily get caught up in the complexity and enormity of this galaxy we call home. Over 100 billion beautiful suns and at least as many planets. 100,000 light years across. And up until a mere century ago last year it was thought to be much smaller and, at that, alone in the universe. But then a man named Harlow Shapley worked out its rough vast dimensions, including the placement of our solar system within it, and informed a near disbelieving world. On and on it has gone since, as we have found our galaxy one among many, its address among what is called a ‘local group’ of galaxies within a larger supercluster, which is then itself within an even larger galactic supercluster. And some are even postulating our universe itself may belong to a ‘multiverse’ consisting of numerous universes.

A person need not be overwhelmed by this, though, since, once we are up to considering a galaxy 100,000 light years across, bigness just gets bigger. And God just gets to still be God.

I recently ran across a poem written about Shapley’s discovery and wanted to share it with you. I know nothing about its author, but would be glad to meet her some day and talk about it. Here it is.

The Dimensions of the Milky Way
by Marilyn Nelson
Discovered by Harlow Shapley, 1918

Behind the men’s dorm
at dusk on a late May evening,
Carver lowers the paper
and watches the light change.

He tries to see earth
across a distance
of twenty-five thousand light-years,
from the center of the Milky Way:
a grain of pollen, a spore
of galactic dust.

He looks around:
that shagbark, those swallows,
the fireflies, that blasted mosquito:
this beautiful world.
A hundred billion stars
in a roughly spherical flattened disc
with a radius of one hundred thousand light-years.

Imagine that.

He catches a falling star.

Well, Lord, this infinitesimal speck
could fill the universe with praise.

Indeed. I could not agree more.

The sky is fascinating. It captivated the ancients as they tried to figure out how this whole thing works, and it even mesmerized the Bible writers with awe and appreciation for its (and their) Creator. And it captivates and mesmerizes me, and I hope you.

When I consider your heavens and the works of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have set in place… O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! (Psalm 8: 3, 9)

~~ RGM, July 30, 2019

From My Nature Journal: The LBJ...

An LBJ… That’s a phrase birders use to refer to any nondescript little bird they cannot identify, or choose not to for the trouble of it. An LBJ is a ‘little brown job,’ generally a sparrow of some sort. One hardly has to pay attention to spot them. They’re ubiquitous, everywhere. Some folks call them LGB’s, ‘little gray birds,’ but the birders I have known prefer LBJ.

In walking through a natural area just now, I picked up a little grey-brown feather actually floating down through the air from some passing little brown job. I could never begin to make identification at this point. The bird is long gone. What’s left is just an indistinct little feather from some indistinct little bird.

But nondescript? I look closely and find it quite lovely. It’s

only about three and a half inches in length, soft-white shaft, soft grey-brown hairs.

Nondescript? In what way? The closer I look the more astonishingly beautiful it becomes. The shaft is not all soft-white, nor the hairs all soft grey-brown, but of differing hues; even the individual hairs are multi-colored. And there are hundreds and hundreds of those soft hairs, starting so minusculely small I cannot see them with my naked eye, then gradually getting longer until they are about three eights of an inch at their longest on the one side, but then shorter again, somehow tapered toward the top in such a way as to leave an impression of a rounded tip. (How does it do that?)

Nondescript? In what way? The 

closer I look the more astonishingly 

beautiful it becomes...

Nondescript? Hardly! I imagine if I held this feather under a microscope, I would be even all the more thoroughly amazed by its complexity. And this from just one indistinct feather from what many consider an insignificant little bird!

Lord, I am an LBJ, self-confessed, in fact a card-carrying member of the club! I struggle at times to know my own significance in this world, in my current ministry call, in what You seem to be calling me to. But Lord, You know what?

I can sing my little heart out for You, too. I can sing it from the top of my little insignificant lungs. I can add my voice to the praises You hear from Your hills (from whence my Help comes), or from Your trees (that clap their hands), even from Your very stones (as they cry out Your praise), let alone the praises of Your people! Yes, I am a little brown job… For even in my insignificance, You do Your astonishingly beautiful work.

                                                   I am Your workmanship.

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest, at Your altar, O lord of hosts, my King and my God. Blessed are those who dwell in Your house, ever singing Your praise! (Psalm 84:3-4)

~~RGM, From an earlier journal entry,

Adapted for my blog September 6, 2014

From My Nature Journal: No Big Deal?

One of my kids is studying to become a nurse. If I recall correctly, among Jarrett’s very first classes was one on molecular biology, starting very small. That makes complete sense to me as the foundation point for the study of disease and medicine.

I guess I have come to believe it is one of the basic rules of nature observation as well: get small. Getting small, getting low, never ceases to amaze me in my study of the natural sciences. A square foot of earth becomes a veritable and vast jungle when observed up close. Usually we are more impressed with large things – grand canyons, majestic mountains, tall buildings, redwoods and sequoias, record snowfalls, large stadiums, sweeping vistas, broad rivers. But what of the small? Like a tiny, jewel-like crystal? The trifling fiddlehead fern sprout destined to be a yard wide? The veins of a leaf, the geometric form of molecules or DNA, the myriad colors of grains of sand, a head of wheat, a snowflake, a common guppy, the half-inch cone of a one-hundred-foot hemlock?

There is a wonder, a magnificence, in God’s creation that defies adjectives, indeed that sometimes even defies language at all. Be things large or small, I routinely struggle in these essays to describe the splendors and intricacies I see or the lessons I learn. However, it is interesting that I often find richer and more faithful curricula in paying attention to the small or commonplace things rather than the mighty. (Click here for one of my earliest blogposts last year on the significance of seemingly insignificant things.)

It is almost counterintuitive, because in life and work I have accustomed myself to look for broader pictures. Even in photography, Gail has much more of an eye (patience, more likely!) for macrophotography than I do. I’m the one who tends to compose landscapes, panoramas and scenery; she will usually be the only one of us to get down on the ground on her stomach and elbows and take close-ups of bugs, flowers and whatnot. Doubtless there is symbol there, she with her details and me with bigger picture things; we make for a good team.

Photo Notes…

1. Gail and I thought the larger shell was small

when we picked it up, perhaps a half inch in

diameter. Then we looked more closely at the

shells strewn on the Florida beach and

spotted the smaller one, maybe 1/8 inch at

most. (We’ll often use one of our rings in a

photo for size comparison purposes.)

2. This brilliantly-colored little leaf hopper is

maybe 3/16 inch long, and makes the grains of

sand seem as boulders. A question for my

entomologist friends Kirk or Bill: what kind is it?

It’s from Michigan’s U.P.

3. Note the spiral beauty in a tiny cactus seen in

central Colorado, barely larger than Gail’s wedding rings.

4. This little hermit crab character might be one

the coolest photos of something small I have ever

seen. It was taken by our daughter Sarah and

son-in-law BJ on the Oregon coast, amazing.

Jesus said in Luke 16:10, “Who is faithful in small things I will make faithful in much.” It was David, the runt of the litter, who became Israel’s greatest king; ‘gravitationally-challenged’ Zacchaeus whose home the Savior chose to honor; sparrows nesting in the temple’s eaves that caught the attention of the Psalmist; little children that Christ challenged us to exemplify; Joseph, the little brother, who ends up saving his family from famine; the tongue in James 3, likened to the small rudder of a large ship or a small flame that starts a forest fire; Gideon’s army whom God assured that smaller would be better; the infinitesimal ant that provided a lesson to the wise writer of the Proverbs; even God himself who was incarnated to us as a small baby in a small way in a small place.

So, Lord, teach me always to look carefully -- high and low, large and small -- for sightings of your graces and demonstrations of your truths.

~~ RGM, from an earlier journal entry,

adapted for my blog June 3, 2014

P.S. I remember from my youth seeing a video that demonstrated the common frontiers of vastness and minutiae; it was called “Powers of Ten.” Press here to check it out if you have several more minutes; it’s pretty impressive.

QOTM...*: James Lovell, Norman Cousins and God!

(*Quotes of the Month)

We learned a lot about the moon, but what we really learned was about the earth: the fact that from the distance of the moon you can put your hand up and hide it behind your thumb. Everything that you’ve ever known – your loved ones, your business, the problems of the earth itself – all behind your thumb; how insignificant we all really are, but then how fortunate to be able to enjoy loving here amongst the beauty of the earth itself.

~~ Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 and 13

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.

~~ Norman Cousins, Journalist

Earthrise

A couple weeks ago I posted the iconic photo Earthrise in anticipation of Earth Day this past Monday. Hit the emboldened word to see my post about it, one of the most celebrated environmental photographs of all time. Though I typically only include Gail’s and my photography here in my blog, I chose to make an exception with that post.

In doing some simple research on the photo, however, I ran across some quotes relative to the Apollo moon mission that I thought I’d also enjoy sharing for my QOTM this time around. You see them above. Additionally, these have tempted me to share a second famous photo not by us, entitled The Blue Marble, and I 

yield to that temptation here!

The Blue Marble

The Blue Marble was taken nearly four years after Earthshine was snapped. It’s details? It was taken from a distance of 28,000 miles on December 7, 1972, by the crew of Apollo 17 on the way to the moon, the last of the Apollo missions. It was the first real time photo ever taken of the fully lighted, entire earth. Why the first with all the previous missions? Because the astronauts had the sun fully at their back for the first time. It was also the first photo of the Antarctic icecap, as it was the first time an Apollo capsule’s specific trajectory toward the moon allowed it to be seen in that manner. And as you can see, prominent also in the photo is Africa, Madagascar and the Saudi Peninsula. Click on the photo itself to the right to see the image in all its beauty.

John Muir, the American naturalist of whom I wrote in January, referred to the earth not as a blue marble but as a beautiful dewdrop among the stars. I like that, too.

I don’t know about you, but these famous photos make my heart beat a little faster, to see the earth as God sees it. So what does God have to say about it? How about some quotes from the Almighty?

Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool.

~~ God, Isaiah 66:1

Or how about this one?

With my great power and outstretched arm I made the earth and its people and the animals that are on it, and I give it to anyone I please.

~~ God, Jeremiah 27:5

I am so glad it pleased God to give it to us. Finally, one more:

It’s a small world after all.

~~ God

Or was that one Walt Disney? Whichever, it still fits. God made it that way. Respond with me if you’d like:

Oh God, You Who have ordered this wondrous world, and Who know all things in earth and heaven: so fill our hearts with trust in You that by night and day, at all times and in all seasons, we may without fear commit all that we have and hope to be to Your never-failing love, for this life and the life to come; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Methodist Book of Worship)

~~ RGM, April 27, 2013

P.S. Next up next week? “From my Journal…”