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The Eye of God
 Helix Nebula ("The Eye of God") NGC 7293.
Composite photo from the Hubble Telescope. Religion says we are "created in the image of God" and yet are "fallen" creatures. Let us leave to theologians and philosophers to debate, if not resolve, this paradox. Meanwhile, science tells us both are in a sense true. For we are made of stardust. And stardust, like the falling embers from a fireworks rocket, is the stuff of an exploding, dying star. If I could choose a single dying star to be born from, or if not, to gaze on, it would be the dying sun-like star called NGC 7293, the Helix Nebula. When I first saw it, as caught by the Hubble Orbiting Space Telescope in 2003 and sent out on the world wide web as this composite photo, I had the same reaction others did: "My God," I thought, " I'm seeing the Eye of God!" Like God and his eye on us are said to be, it's both closer and farther away than you might think. It's the closest planetary nebula to earth, "only" 650 light-years away, out toward the constellation Aquarius. Its "pupil" and corona are formed by fluorescing gases expelled from its imploding central star, which will finallly explode and die as a white dwarf. The "Eye of God" is also known as the "Eye of Sauron" because it reminds some of Sauron's evil eye in the "Lord of the Rings" films. |
Library
~ Table of Contents ~
TYCHE & OEDIPUS
Adonis & Aphrodite Fatal Boar Hunts, Fatal Loves: Meleager & Adonis A Valentine for Camille Flammarion The Met returns its Euphronios vase! Camille Flammarion: Romantic Astronomer The Fountains of Enceladus THE ANCIENT OLYMPIEIA FESTIVAL AT ATHENS Which satyr would you choose... The Marathon Boy and the Satyr Contrapossto from Praxiteles to Rubens and Playboy The Afternoon of a Faun The Dancing Satyr - A Lost Bronze of Praxiteles? Hermes, The Liar Who Invented the Lyre Inanna, Queen of Uruk Inanna Adored: The Uruk Vase The Moon-God Nanna-Sin Visits his Ziggurat at Ur Apollo Sauroktonos, or How the Romans Killed the Lizard-Killer Jacob's Ladder Inanna and the Harrowing of Hell Lilith: Wild Demon of Sex and Death DUMUZI FEEDS INANNA'S SHEEP The Sun God in his Dragon Boat A Stairway to Heaven: The Ziggurat at Ur Lassalle's Post-Modern Male Torso Brancusi's Torsos: Pure Platonic Forms? Brancusi on Men and Women: Take the Tate Test? Four Gods Greet the Rising Sun God Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo Culsu & Vanth Lead the Dead into Hades Aita, the Etruscan Hades Socrates' Apology: The Background A FATEFUL CHARIOT RACE: The STORY of PELOPS and OENOMAUS |
