Stargazing

I wish I could say I took this image, but I just found it on Google. It is very nearly what I saw tonight, at least one of the things I saw. Jason Lisle, the astrophysicist on staff at Answers in Genesis had an informal stargazing session tonight. After Bible Study I headed over to the museum to join in (I'd been off today so I heard about it from a coworker).

I work the official Stargazer's Nights that the Creation Museum puts on, so I've been trained on the telescopes that the museum owns, but it is still fun to look because I'm still learning how and where to locate celestial objects. This picture is of Jupiter and the four Galelian (sp?) moons. When I looked tonight three of the moons were on one side of the planet and in line with them you could see at least two bands on the planet itself. We also looked at Saturn (you can see the rings), the galaxy M87, a globular cluster, a binary star (I don't remember the name, but it was near Cygnus--the northern cross--and one star was blue, one was gold), and several other things. It was quite fun.

It is so amazing to look up at the sky and see all that God has made. I've been in the Planetarium at the Creation Museum many, many times (I often joke that it is home because it is so familiar). If you come to the Museum you HAVE to see the show--and you can even buy a flat-screen version on DVD which is pretty awesome, even if it isn't on the domed ceiling. Anyway, at one point in the script Jason mentions when summing up all of the celestial wonders that God created that God simply said in Genesis 1:16b "He made the stars also."

~Matt