Bird of Prey between Mars and Jupiter
NASA's Hubble telescope took an astounding photograph in January 2010 of a rare sighting that is around 90,000,000 miles away (confirmed to be between the planets of Mars and Jupiter). Here is the picture from NASA:
NASA says it is cruising at a speed close to 11,000 mph. Early news reports, based upon the "x-structure shape" resemblance, compared the observable structure to the likeness of a Klingon "Bird of Prey" warship (see below). Perhaps it was caught off-guard by the Hubble telescope's camera before its cloaking device could be fully engaged.
D'oh! Any Trekkie worth his salt knows that they are the Romulons (and not Klingons) who build the Birds of Prey. And here's the shameless plug for capitalism ... When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks. (I couldn't resist slipping in that bit of fun.)
Now as amazing as NASA's picture is of this space object, there are hundreds of millions of breath-taking stars and constellations across the 7.2 billion mile diameter of our own Milky Way Galaxy, just one of billions of galaxies in the known universe. So then how can we make sense of the disproportion between the gigantuan size of the universe and the smallness of man?
"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him? Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor." (Psalms 8:3-5)
The magnitude of the universe is not meant to correlate with an image, but with the Original. The heavens are not designed to declare the glory of man, but rather, “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalms 19:1). The point of the universe is that God is great and man is infinitely less great.
I didn't say man is not great. Psalm 8 acknowledges that man is great. Man is "a little lower than the heavenly beings." Only now are we ready to see the point of the universe and why Psalm 8 begins and ends, “O Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!” It doesn't say, “O Man, image of God, how majestic is your name in all the earth.”
Man is great and unique among all creatures here on earth. But that greatness is microscopically small when compared to God’s greatness. God reveals to us that, "My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I call to them, they stand forth together." (Isaiah 48:13) Therefore, we return to the question, “What is man that you are mindful of him?” The universe is designed to remind us of this distance between God’s infinite greatness, and man’s finite greatness. Man resides on tiny planet earth in a seemingly infinite universe. And the universe appears infinite to us as a fitting picture of what the universe cannot actually be: infinite. Only God is infinite. The universe is declaring at least that.