Looking at the Heavens, A Lifelong Passion
Growing up in the city, I had no real appreciation of the night sky, as city lights (also called “light pollution”) prevented observing objects such as the Milky Way. It was not until I visited family in rural Tennessee that I encountered the night sky without city lights. It was an overwhelming experience! I saw a haze in the sky that I later learned was the Milky Way. Later still I learned that the Milky Way is an arm of the galaxy in which we live, of which our Sun (a "yellow dwarf") is only one of millions of other suns.
Our high school had a planetarium, which was remarkable for an urban high school. I was one of the few kids that was actually interested in the teacher's presentation of constellations and heavenly bodies projected on the dome ceiling in the darkened room.
These experiences shaped a lifelong interest in astronomy. The same experiences affirmed a strong sense of the reality and power of God. Long before I became a follower of Christ, given what I understood about the universe, I could not conceive of anybody not believing in God. Of course, I learned later that many people explain the creation of the universe as a result of chance, matter, and gravity. That still seems like nonsense to me, though I do not subscribe to the notion that the entire universe is only 6000 years old. (And I fully understand fundamentalist biblical arguments to the contrary)
As a Christ follower for the past 44 years and as an avid photographer, my experiences photographing nature for decades and now astro photography have elevated my appreciation for God's creation! The video below is a compilation of some of my best astro and landscape photography since 2017. In August of that year I saw the greatest thing in nature I had ever seen, a solar eclipse. I traveled to Nashville Tennessee to witness and photograph the total eclipse of the Sun by the Moon (here's a video of that experience).
Compilation of Astro Landscape Photography
