Happy anniversary JWST!
NASA published this stunning image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope to celebrate the first year of remarkable achievements. It is of a star forming region. NASA:
“The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems.”
Such images must make astronomers giddy. I’m not anything close to an astronomer but this image makes my knees a bit weak.
It raises a bit of a question that I have long contemplated. As a theist and believer in an endlessly powerful deity responsible for the universe we inhabit, my response to this image –– like most everything I learn from science –– is worship. The sheer scope and scale of the universe, vaster than any comprehension, generates a sense of awe in the old fashioned meaning of the word. This is the response to confrontation with that which is so far above and beyond us that Rudolph Otto in his profound book The Idea of the Holy calls the numinous.
