Out of this world

I often publish pictures of ancient religious art, whose purpose serves to elevate the mind and heart to God. Here is some art of a different nature, created by God Himself. I had these emailed to me a few weeks ago, and they are so incredibly beautiful I think they are worthy of sharing. The pictures and their descriptions originally appeared in the dailymail.couk, and were taken by the Hubble telescope, though their true credit belongs to the Author of the universe.


The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth.



The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas that lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth.



Nebula NGC 2392, called Eskimo because it looks like a face surrounded by a furry hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth.



Cat's Eye Nebula



The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away



The Cone Nebula. The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon)



The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away, described as 'a bubbly ocean of hydrogen and small amounts of oxygen, sulphur and other elements'



Starry Night, so named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting. It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way



The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation.



The Trifid Nebula. A 'stellar nursery', 9,000 light years from here, it is where new stars are being born.