Photo # 1 (Apr 2009)

ORION NEBULA: THE HUBBLE VIEW

Physicists explore levels of matter; mystics explore levels of mind. What they have in common is that both levels lie beyond ordinary sense perception... At this deep level, ecology merges with spirituality because the experience of being connected with all of nature, of belonging to the universe, is the very essence of spirituality.
                              - Fritjof Capra

Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (STScI/ESA) et al.

Few cosmic vistas excite the imagination like the Orion Nebula. Also known as M42, the nebula's glowing gas surrounds hot young stars at the edge of an immense interstellar molecular cloud only 1,500 light-years away. The Orion Nebula offers one of the best opportunities to study how stars are born partly because it is the nearest large star-forming region, but also because the nebula's energetic stars have blown away obscuring gas and dust clouds that would otherwise block our view - providing an intimate look at a range of ongoing stages of starbirth and evolution. This detailed image of the Orion Nebula is the sharpest ever, constructed using data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys and the European Southern Observatory's La Silla 2.2 meter telescope. The mosaic contains a billion pixels at full resolution and reveals about 3,000 stars.

Many confuse spirituality with religion. While religion may inspire us to connect with our personal sprituality, we are often able to connect with this awareness through other approaches: meditation, communing with nature, experiencing a deep compassion for other living beings, and sensing that we are loved by others or by the Infinite Source, to name only a few.
                              - Daniel Benor, MD