Astronomical Easter Eggs found!!!

AS most of you who would even go to our blog know, one of the recent hobbies that has been re-kindled within me is the love of and search of the Night Skies" At the age of 12 my Mom, (Louise DiFiore), bought me a Meade 60mm refractor telescope. Much like the ones you find today. Pretty inexpensive pretty basic, pretty poor for real sky study, but the 1st time I saw the craters and seas of our Moon, I fell in love with the things of the night sky. Time and responsibilities caused a drifting from this love for most of my adult life. But one Christmas Kim bought me a similar scope to the one my Mom bought me, and the love of the sky was re-kindled again, with one major difference......Pres. Bush said we would get an "Economic Stimulus Check" this year. So with a re-kindled desire and the check in the mail I upgraded to a 150mm 6 inch Celestron Reflector (uses mirrors instead of lenses). Well that drastically changed my capacity to study the skies and I found and continue to find things that both fasinate and amaze me.

This past Friday Kim and I (Mainly Kim) got the idea to go down to Jessie and Tanner's on James River Farm, and do some star gazing. Jessie has been wanting to see Saturn (which has already disappeared over the horizon for the year), and I was excited about actually having such a wide field of view and some really dark skies. In the city the light pollution really disables us to see as acutely as we would like, but at the farm....WOW!!!!! I saw into "forever" and figured out that is a long ways out. We got to see Jupiter with it's four moons all lines up in a row, I found the Globular Cluster M$ in Scorpius, we saw 4 meteorite shoot across the southern sky, found the double stars Mizar and Alcor in the Constellation Ursa Major (where the Big Dipper is located), and for the 1st time in many years actually saw the Little Dipper with all its designing stars. Around the house here I am lucky to see Polaris much less the asterism. We got to see the Teapot in Saggitarius, and the infamous fish hook/Scorpius. And the list continues and I can not remember it all because I was like a little kid on an Easter Egg Hunt. I just put the eggs in my basket and after a while had so many I did not know where or what I had found. And on top of it all I got to spend the night and part of the next morning with 3 of my favorite people....Ki, Jessie, and Tanner, and got to share with them many of the things I hold in wonderment. What an awesome night.

And not to forget on top of all this, when we got to Jessie and Tanner's ...Kim and I got to listen to the heartbeat of the baby Jessie is carrying inside her right now. Not really sure which was more exciting, but certainly the heartbeat was by far the most important and fulfilling for me. Jessie had borrowed my MP3 player to make the recording, so I hope in the near future to be able to download it to the blog and share with each of you.

Below you will find pictures of many of the things that fasinate me in the night sky. As I talk to some of my astronomy friends, many see only and can not except anything other than the things which are scientifically proven, but for me when I look into the sky my testimony of the reality of a greater power is reinforced. I have very specific feelings and thoughts on this matter, and stand in amazement that others when they see the things I see in the skies and very often see much more...see only stars, planets, nebulae, galaxies, etc..... where I see the crative forces of a loving and all powerful Heavenly Father and that His creations are here for our benefit and his purpose..."to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of Man (woman)." I am absolutely convinced that there are other worlds and other creations that exist because of the omnipotence of God, and his eternal purpose of life. There is a recent picture taken by the "Hubble Telescope" that has taken a picture of the cosmos' as far as any has ever been taken. In that one miniscule area of space...that picture showed literally 1000's of galaxies much like our own. What is the possibility that at least one (and probably many) do not host others just like us, with the same wondering as they look back in our direction. I know there is so much more to life than we can even comprehend, and so much to living that we enjoy at the hands of a loving and caring Father in Heaven. And that he has much more prepared for our eternal jouney that we can not even come close to comprehending! Not trying to sound "Preachy", but stop, reflect, and even take the challenge to pray and ask your Father in Heaven if this is not a real possibility...and I know you will understand too. We are not alone, nor have we ever been, someone has always and will always watch over each of us personally.

OK, enough of that,,...let' get to the really cool pictures that will help you understand my excitement...As a disclaimer...we did not take these picture Friday night a Jessie's, but these are many of the things we found in the night sky at James River Farm on August 8, 2008.

This 1st Pic is actually the closest galaxy to our own, and belongs to a group of galaxies near to us. It is M31...The Andromeda Galaxy, and on a dark night can be seen with the naked eye...that is how close it is to us
This is M4 found in Scorpius. It is one of the new Messier objects I found at Jessies. I have been looking for it for weeks, but only in a big sky could I find it becuase it lays low on the southern horizon. My trees on the back porch allow me to see "NO horizon!!!!
This next Pic in M41 is a open Cluster with a diameter of approximately of 25 light years (that is the distance light travels in 25 years at the rate of approx. 196,000 miles a second), is this giving you any idea of the space you live in????
This is NGC 5139 the brightest globular cluster in
OUR" sky. there are thousands of stars in this one cluster that occupies a little speck of space.
Below is "the Whirlpool Galaxy"...37 million light years away from us!!!!!!

Well I hope you found this both interesting, educational, but most of all thought provoking. If you ever want to have a star party,,just give me a call...I'd love to be there.....kjb