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The words "The heavens declare the glory of God.. ." (Ps.19:1) resonate for the Christian today just as they did for the Hebrew Psalmist.

"The people of ancient times brought to their study of the heavens the entire range of human emotions -- fear, religious awe, humor, and artistry underlie the many sky tales and creation stories of the world. To fully appreciate the skies as seen by the ancients we need to feel the emotional climate in which our ancestors operated. As many of us live in bright, light-polluted cities, and spend much of our time indoors at night, it is difficult for us to fully graphic illustrating the interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus

graphic illustrating the interior of Saturn's moon Enceladus

appreciate the majesty of the night sky, and the important role it played in ancient times. We need to try to remember the rush of emotions we felt the first time we looked at a dark night sky, and clearly saw the Milky Way crossing the sky amidst a sea of countless stars. In such times, logical and scientific explanations of the stars and the [origin of the universe] are lost in our overwhelming appreciation of our smallness in the vast darkness of space.

NASA-Funded Study Says Saturn's Moon Enceladus Rolled Over

05.31.06 -- Saturn's moon Enceladus - an active, icy world with an unusually warm south pole - may have performed an unusual trick for a planetary body.

While ancient astronomy reflects much of the religion and emotions of our ancestors, we should also not lose sight of the scientific component which underlies all of ancient astronomy. While crude by modern standards, the measurements of ancient astronomers were often of impressive precision in their description of planetary motions, and in the measurement of risings and settings of constellations.

In addition to the many obvious technical successes of ancient astronomy evidenced by written records and huge monuments, there are countless mysteries about which sites and practices actually were connected with astronomy. Here the gaps in language and the lack of survivors makes our task difficult and fascinating. Initial speculations about the astronomical significance of Stonehenge, medicine wheels and alignments within ancient stone buildings seem to be borne out by careful calculation and reasonable assumptions about the ancient astronomers who have vanished forever. Perhaps the greatest challenge of modern archaeoastronomy is to maintain the proper balance of skepticism and cultural awareness in reconstructing the purposes of the many enigmatic ruins of ancient civilization." from pomona.edu.

Biblical references to the heavens need to be examined in the context of the ancient near east to gain a fuller understanding of their meaning to the writer and to modern times. See the papers of Watts and Heyers

Google Earth goes beyond its initial purpose and has a new feature that lets you explore the sky. The latest version (Google Earth 4.2) brings what could've been a separate program for rendering the sky, like Stellarium.

After launching the application, click on the black rounded icon from the toolbar and switch to the sky mode. Google Earth shows the sky from the current location and becomes a virtual telescope for amateur stargazers.

"This easy-to-use tool enables all Earth users to view and navigate through 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies. High resolution imagery and informative overlays create a unique playground for visualizing and learning about space," explains the press release.

The layers include a lot of interesting information about stars, constellations, galaxies, images from the Hubble Space Telescope.

Planetary scientists had reported lakes around Titan’s southern poles, but now it looks like the northern hemisphere has liquid on the surface as well. Of course, we’re not talking about water, that would be frozen solid. These are seas filled with liquid methane or ethane.

The seas were turned up by Cassini’s radar instrument during a recent flyby past Titan’s north pole. The largest of these features measures about 100,000 square kilometres (39,000 square miles). That’s a surface area larger than Lake Superior here on Earth.

Since Cassini used its radar instruments to image the seas, scientists aren’t completely positive that’s what they’re looking at. In radar, liquids appear as dark patches, indicating smooth surfaces. Another flyby is planned for May, where Cassini will fly directly over these dark patches and get a better look.

Neutron Star With a Tail Like a Comet

01 Jun 2006 - This beautiful image shows the supernova remnant IC 443. The area in the box contains what looks like a tiny comet with a tail, but it's actually a neutron star, moving quickly through the nebula. Neutron stars have been seen moving away from supernova remnants before, but in this case, it's moving perpendicular. One possibility is that the former star was moving quickly through the galaxy before it exploded. The gas and dust in the nebula have slowed down and drifted away from the neutron star.
Universe Today

Dec 6, 2005 - Astronomers from Rice University have created an amazing movie of jets of plasma blasting out of a newborn star. This series of images taken five years apart by the

Hubble Space Telescope allow astronomers to track how material flows out of the star. Faster moving particles crash into slower moving material, and the resulting traffic jams create the spectacular shapes in space.
Universe Today

Apr 8, 2005 - A vast looping structure 20 light-years across has been discovered near the heart of the Milky Way. The loop was found near a star forming region of our galaxy in the X-ray spectrum using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton

space telescope. Very high energy particles, usually only seen coming from pulsars or supernovae remnants, are streaming out of the object, so it could be working as a kind of natural particle accelerator.

Robert B. Mann, “Inconstant Multiverse,” PSCF 57:4, 302, (December 2005)
Explaining why there is something rather than nothing is one of theology’s primary tasks. Recent scientific findings in cosmology have suggested a new theological task: explaining why there is something rather than everything. This task arises because of the conjunction of two intriguing properties of our universe: its strong biophilic selection effects and its apparent causal-connectedness on its largest scales. Current explanatory paradigms—respectively the anthropic principle and the inflationary universe—have suggested to many that our observable universe is a small part of a much larger structure called the multiverse. A multiverse presents us with a containment problem, since its logical extension suggests that anything that can exist, does exist. I argue such a perspective is incompatible with the foundations of both science and theology. As an antidote, I propose the altiverse: a set of possible alternatives that logically exist but are not physically realized.

Owen Gingerich, "Truth in Science: Proof, Persuasion, and the Galileo Affair," PSCF 55.2:80-87 (6/2003).
In 1616 in a letter destined for Galileo, Cardinal Roberto Bellarmine (the leading Catholic theologian of his day) expressed his doubts about finding evidence for a moving earth. Would the annual stellar parallax or the Foucault pendulum have convinced him? The historical setting explored in this essay suggests that the cardinal would not have been swayed by these modern “proofs” of the heliocentric cosmology, even though they are convincing to us today because in the meantime, we have the advantage of a Newtonian framework. What passes today for truth in science is a comprehensive system of coherencies supported more by persuasion than “proofs.”

This composite of three images from the navigation camera shows the view from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity toward the southeast, in the direction of "Victoria Crater," on the rover's 817th Martian day, or sol (May 12, 2006). To reach Victoria Crater, still about 1,100 meters (two-thirds of a mile) from this location, the rover must navigate among the large ripples visible on the left and ahead in the distance.

On this soil, Opportunity was preparing to deploy its arm instrument suite to analyze a rock on the outcrop pavement. At upper right is a small depression that was the target of further imaging on sols 825 and 826 (May 20 and 21, 2006).

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell

Colin Humphreys, "The Star of Bethlehem," Science and Christian Belief , Vol 5, (October 1995): 83-101 Used by permission.

Van Till, Howard J., "The Legend of the Shrinking Sun - A Case Study Comparing Professional Science and "Creation Science" in Action," PSCF 38.3:164-174 (9/1986.)
In recent years, advocates of the young earth hypothesis have assembled numerous lists of "scientific evidences" for their recent creation scenario. In this paper we critically evaluate the scientific adequacy of one such evidential claim of "creation-science," viz., that the sun's diameter has been shrinking in such a manner as to preclude the credibility of the standard multibillion-year chronology for terrestrial history. Within the professional scientific community, a preliminary report which suggested a long-term and rapid shrinkage of the sun presented a puzzle for solar astronomers. Consequently, additional studies were made and the credibility of the original data was re-evaluated. The result is that secular shrinkage has not been

substantiated, but an 80-year oscillatory behavior was discovered. Within the "creation-science" community, however, the response to the original report has been remarkably different. The suggestion of rapid long-term shrinkage was uncritically accepted, the evidence and conclusions drawn from subsequent studies were generally dismissed, and extrapolations of the presumed rapid solar shrinkage have been performed without restraint. Isolated from the corrective of continuing professional investigation and evaluation, the "creation-science" community continues to employ this unwarranted extrapolation of a discredited report as a scientific evidence" for a young earth. The credibility of the Christian witness to a scientifically knowledgeable world is thereby clouded.

Jim Slagle on C. S. Lewis' The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature
The "discarded image" refers to the Medieval model of the universe, and how intellectually satisfying it is -- not in the sense that we can still believe it to be correct (it was a geocentric model, after all), but in the sense that they conceived the universe as intricately organized, with "a place for everything and everything in its place." To this end, Lewis is constantly correcting common misperceptions about what the Medieval model actually was.

Books

Deborah Haarsma and Jennifer Wiseman, "An Evolving Cosmos," Chapter 6 in Keith B. Miller, ed. Perspectives on an Evolving Creation, Eerdmans, 2003.

Brian Greene,, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory Paperback , Vintage Books, 2000

Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes Paperback , Bantam Books, Incorporated, 1998.

Stephen W. Hawking, Roger Penrose , The Nature of Space and Time Paperback , Princeton University Press, 2000.

Norris S. Hetherington, ed., Cosmology: Historical, Literary, Philosophical, Religious, and Scientific Perspectives Paperback , Garland Publishing, Incorporated, 1996

Howard J. Van Till, The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens are Telling Us About the Creation, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986. Remains a useful introducion to the field.

Web Sites

History of Astronomy: ephemeris.com NASA/JPL A very complete collection of biblical and other Jewish references to the heavens, dates of religious feasts, etc. and calendar design

Today at NASA Includes recent missions, news and information, history and launch schedules. Read the latest press releases

Women of NASA Highlights the contribution of women to NASA's development. Find profiles, forums, teaching tips, and a version of the contents in Spanish

Jet Propulsion Laboratory Center for robotic exploration of the solar system. Includes links to the many organizational programs governed by the JPL.

NASA Academy Application, eligibility and financial assistance for NASA's summer institute of higher learning which identifies future space program leaders.

Astronomy for Kids A great site for things for kids and their parents to do on a clear evening.

Please send comments and suggestions of additional material to haas.john@comcast.net

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