O, Holy Night: The Stars are Brightly Shining
Baby Jesus, deep space, and objectivity on the eve of Christmas
It’s that most wonderful, problematic time of year again: Christmas — when herald angels and rock icons sing praises to the holiday and swaths of people weigh in on, weave, or skirt around the religion of Santa Claus and the “myth” of Jesus.
In my simple mind, the dilemma of what Christmas actually means might come down to a question like this: Could there really have been a new star to commemorate the birth of a heavenly child?
I sure think so. The possibility is wide open.
Here’s my why.
Before the Hubble telescope took up residence on the clear side of Earth’s atmosphere, hazily little was known about the scope of the cosmos…although it appears that we knew enough to say we know.
Image after incoming image, scientists (along with the rest of us) realized the limitations of previous lenses on “space.” We’d been incomplete, naive, even wrong.
A few decades of astronomical awakening later, we stand corrected, awed, infused with new understanding.
Before long, we will again be re-minded: we have so much to learn.
The James Webb Space Telescope, wheeling its orbit around the sun on the other side of the moon from us, will open views we can barely anticipate.
And yet…
The general megamind of the scientific and intellectual community will not countenance the idea that in a universe of unknowns and possibles, of shocks of discovery and enduring unresolved mystery, the Son of God could have come to our dimension with a new star bursting forth in his wake.
I ask, why not?
I can conceive of a joyful God whose intelligence ignites a new star for every arriving child…maybe even eons before it’s visible to us on Earth.
That I choose that stance is, of course, a matter of faith.
But, in absence of proof otherwise and considering the exponential pace of extraterrestrial discovery, I ask again, why not?
Have yourself a stellar little Christmas night, World.
Someone amazing has left the lights on for you.
The star-forming region NGC 3603 — seen here in the latest Hubble Space Telescope image — contains one of the most impressive massive young star clusters in the Milky Way. Bathed in gas and dust the cluster formed in a huge rush of star formation thought to have occurred around a million years ago. The hot blue stars at the core are responsible for carving out a huge cavity in the gas seen to the right of the star cluster in NGC 3603’s centre.
(More thrill and awe here: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/archive/top100/)
