Wonders of the Solar System
Few of us can look up into the night sky and not feel awe at the magnificence in the universe that we can see. It becomes even more amazing when we know a bit about astronomy.
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| NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC) |
One of the wonderful things about astronomy is that it is so different from our everyday experience. Things are not what they might seem at first glance. Who could have guessed that those tiny little specks of light in our night sky are actually “suns” hundreds of times larger than Earth? Who would have suspected that the “evening star” is actually a rocky planet about the same size as our own? How unexpected to find that the solid earth beneath our feet is actually moving at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun, all the while spinning like a top! God has constructed the universe in a truly marvelous way. As we study it, the universe continually surprises and delights us by challenging our understanding of how things work.
Our solar system is a great example of this. We can actually see much of the solar system on a cloudless night. Most of the planets are visible to the unaided eye—appearing as tiny points of light. In reality, they are enormous spheres, some comparable in size to the earth, while others are much larger. The sun and moon are visible as small circles in our sky. Yet, in reality the moon is as large in diameter as the continental United States, and the sun is 400 times wider than the moon. The stars, sun, moon, and planets rise and set with clockwork precision. They seem to pay tribute to the earth as they respectfully circle around their master. But the truth of the matter is that Earth rotates as it moves around the sun. Every new discovery in astronomy is a surprising and delightful revelation that God is even more amazing, creative, and powerful than we previously supposed.You can read the rest of "The Solar System", here.