Participants: Jim Burr
Series Code: HDS
Program Code: HDS000012A
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00:23 Welcome to Heavens Declare, I'm Jim Burr and today we're 00:27 going to be talking about Orion. But before we do that I want to 00:33 show you some of the telescopes that I designed. We were doing 00:39 this seminar back east, I'm from Colorado, and some friends from 00:43 40 years ago were there at the seminar and this friend, this 00:48 gentleman said to me afterwards, he kind of took me to task, he 00:52 took me to the woodshed. He says you know you come and do this 00:55 weekend seminar and he said you didn't show hardly anything of 00:59 the telescopes that you've designed. He said there might be 01:03 some young person here that would be inspired by seeing some 01:09 of those things. Because I often joke about being a high school 01:15 drop out, I had this serious case of dyslexia, and when I say 01:19 well I'm a high school dropout, well actually my body graduated 01:24 but my mind dropped out a long time before. I invented a 01:28 a binocular telescope. A binocular telescope has never 01:33 been done before. We have binoculars of course and we have 01:37 telescopes but a binocular telescope is a very seriously 01:42 difficult thing to do. These things are so powerful that you 01:45 cannot build two telescope that can aim at the same stars. 01:49 They're going to be like weird; you'd never come together. 01:54 What I did, I took six motors to do this and so what I did was 01:59 I put a bearing on each side of one of the telescopes and then I 02:04 put a bearing on top and bottom so one telescope would go left 02:08 and right and one would go up and down. Basically the motors 02:12 we give the customer a motor and he knows like we build these 02:15 things and we look down the road and here's a power line pole but 02:18 you've got a pole in each eye. You run one motor, OK, but 02:21 that's lined up but the cross bars are off. So the customer 02:24 gets a switch. He knows the stars are going this way (side 02:27 to side) with this switch and up and down with this switch, these 02:29 two bearings, so you aim the two telescopes. You just bring them 02:33 together, you know. So that was the way to get the job done. 02:37 The next thing was interoccular spacing. Eyes are different so 02:41 it takes two motors to get the eyes lined up and then it took 02:46 two motors to focus each eye. So we have the first image coming up 02:50 here of the six-inch binocular telescope and you can see the 02:54 lady looking down into it. You see who it works there. There's 02:58 two eye pieces, you look down into the instrument and light 03:01 comes in over your shoulder. So you can actually look straight 03:04 up in the sky by looking down. It's very comfortable; much more 03:07 comfortable than trying to hold something and look up in the sky 03:10 The six-inch one on the left shows you the handle bars. 03:14 It has a computer on it for finding things and handle bars 03:17 to scan around the sky. When both eyes work, it is 03:22 like unbelievable the difference We have the next image of our 03:27 show room and in that you'll see some larger ones there. Those 03:33 big, large white telescopes, those are 14-inch I think. 03:37 We make up to 16-inch binocular telescopes. Then you see a very 03:41 large black scope. That's a 30-inch scope and we sold two of 03:46 those to NASA for the Mars science lab which later became 03:51 the Mars Curiosity. The idea was that they wanted to get data 03:58 back from Mars on a laser beam. Now they used radio RF. You know 04:03 you can't aim RF very well. Radio you can't aim it very well 04:07 The footprint tends to be a hundred million, two hundred 04:11 million miles when it hits earth So right now data from Mars 04:15 using 35 meter dishes they get one megabyte per second and 04:19 that's what it was at about 2002 at least but things may have 04:23 changed. They're getting one megabyte a second. They said 04:27 with laser it would go to 100 megabytes a second but lasers 04:32 are optics; we need telescopes. So I was at their laser lab in 04:36 Pasadena. They modulate a beam of laser. The idea was a beam of 04:40 laser's on the orbiter going around Mars. They could actually 04:44 aim it. The footprint, I was talking about the RF would be a 04:48 hundred million miles or so. The footprint's pretty spread out. 04:51 You can't aim it. A laser you can aim. The footprint would be 04:54 about 50 miles and data would go from one megabyte a second to 04:58 a hundred megabytes a second. So they bought the first scope. 05:01 I was told that they spent two years looking for the right 05:05 telescope. They bought that large one in 2002 and they 05:08 bought another one in 2004 and they were going to need 16 of 05:13 these and I thought well there's my retirement; it's a pretty big 05:16 instrument. Well NASA got their budget cut and that was the end 05:20 of it. The Mars science lab was delayed; it's been delayed and 05:23 delayed and delayed. It finally was launched. They changed the 05:27 name on it. It now became the Mars Curiosity when it finally 05:31 launched. So they're still using RF, they're not using laser 05:35 because of their budget cut. Well they did test these 05:39 telescopes and on the Messenger space craft... We have the 05:44 Messenger space craft going to Mercury and it has a laser on 05:48 there that is going to image, in fact, it's already done that now 05:52 it's not functioning anymore. But they were going to image 05:56 Mercury with the laser on the Messenger space craft. So I got 06:00 a call from NASA in June of 2005 and they said you know we have a 06:04 free laser in space. We're going to turn the Messenger around and 06:08 aim it back to earth and we want to see how data is working, how 06:11 well this is working. But what blew me away was this was in the 06:15 daytime. I mean we've got the sun, Mercury's going around the 06:20 sun and they were headed towards the sun and they said we're 06:23 going to test it at 11 o'clock in the morning and it's quite 06:26 close to the sun; it's five degrees from Cirrus which is like 06:29 right in the sky. They just kind of blew me away. I'm thinking 06:32 you're going to point this telescope close to the sun in 06:35 the middle of the day and expect to get images from this 06:39 little laser. It's not a powerful laser. I mean we have 06:43 lasers that would cut through steel, thick, thick steel, but 06:47 to image Mercury you don't need that kind of a laser and you're 06:50 going to get this in the daytime competing with the sun. Well yes 06:53 they did and they pulsed it actually for a few microseconds. 06:57 It was off and then back on again and I got a call from them 07:02 saying that it was working. So I was happy to sell NASA at 07:08 least two of those telescopes. Anyway the biggest telescope 07:14 I've ever built is actually on a four-wheel trailer and that's a 07:20 40-inch telescope on a four- wheel trailer and you want to 07:24 see the heavens with something like that? For 10 years I had 07:28 this in my garage and later we sold it and the man who bought 07:32 it says I can't believe that you're selling your personal 07:36 telescope. And I said will actually the ultimate telescope 07:41 was not a 40-inch telescope but like a 20-inch binocular 07:45 telescope that would actually outperform a 40-inch telescope. 07:48 But the 40-inch on a four-wheel trailer, four wheels, OK, so it 07:51 would come out of my garage, I had to put motors on the tongue, 07:56 crank it up and the tongue sat on a driver motor, so I would 08:01 just throw a switch and it would come out of the garage about one 08:05 mile an hour, just slowly move out of the garage. When I was 08:08 done I'd throw the switch and it would just go in and out of the 08:11 garage. That was quite an exciting instrument to have. 08:18 Well to get into our program, what are you going to do in 08:25 heaven? The Bible says we're going to serve Him. Some 08:32 interesting thoughts I want to share with you. Isaac Asimov 08:35 sci-fi writer made a statement. He said, I do not believe in an 08:39 after life therefore I do not worry about the tortures of 08:43 hell or the boredom of heaven. I thought, heaven is going to be 08:50 boring. I don't think so folks. I'll share an image with you. 08:55 The Hubble actually took a picture in the north and got 20 09:00 thousand galaxies. In fact, the first picture was taken in about 09:06 1995 I think it was. And the Hubble looked in the north, OK, 09:13 through a tiny little speck, like you looking through a 09:18 straw. The Hubble looked through a tiny little speck of the sky, 09:21 they said like a grain of sand at arm's length and it got 09:25 20,000 galaxies. Now if we look at the south, we're looking at 09:29 the center of our Milky Way galaxy and we just get all this 09:32 maze of stars so you can't really see through, but looking 09:35 in the north we're looking out of our galaxy and the Bible even 09:39 talks about that. The Bible says God hangs the north over the 09:43 empty space. So when the Hubble looked up near the Big Dipper 09:47 in that part of the sky and originally the first photograph 09:51 was 10 days. They wanted to see way, way, way out in space. 09:56 So for 10 days light accumulated on the chip and they got 3000 10:01 galaxies. OK, then they went up on the next Hubble repair 10:05 mission where they put better cameras and computers and so 10:09 forth on and it was so much improved where they got 3000 10:13 galaxies in a 10-day time exposure, they got 6000 galaxies 10:20 in 8.4 hours, 8.4. The next image they ran 84 hours and in 10:24 84 hours they got this image I was talking about where they 10:29 have 20,000 galaxies through that little speck in the sky, 10:34 20,000. Each one of those fuzzy things on the screen is 10:38 another galaxy. Now there a few stars there. The stars have like 10:41 spikes on them; that's a factor that's introduced by the 10:45 telescope. But the rest of these are fuzzy little galaxies. 10:49 So what are you going to do when you get to heaven. OK, like Paul 10:53 you might get there and say Lord what are we having to do. You 10:56 know what... The Bible says we're going to serve him. We're 10:58 going to be servants of our God. And Revelation repeats that; 11:01 we're servants, we're servants, we're servants. This is kind of 11:05 fun to think about, what God could do. We've got a cameraman 11:08 over here, Bill. You know what the Lord could say to you, Bill? 11:12 I want to assign you all the galaxies you can see through 11:15 this straw. That's going to be your little corner of the 11:17 universe. I want you to be responsible for that. I want you 11:21 to go check that out and 20,000 galaxies... But first I would 11:25 like you to go spend time with just one galaxy. We'll take a 11:29 look at one galaxy. And the Lord will say, look I want you to 11:32 check out all the stars that you see on the screen there. You're 11:35 going to have a hundred billion, 200 billion, somewhere between 11:38 one hundred and 200 billion stars. That's going to be just 11:41 one of those 20,000 galaxies. I want you to go there, check it 11:45 out. I want you to spend a week on each star system, investigate 11:49 all the planets around it. Now that'd be a pretty good trip, 11:54 but you're going to get a lot of frequent flyer miles because the 11:57 Bible says from one Sabbath to another shall all flesh come to 12:00 worship before me. So you're going to have to come back 12:03 every Sabbath to worship before the Lord and then if you were 12:07 going to cover the stars that you saw on the screen, just one 12:12 galaxy, it's going to take you 14 billion 737 million years to 12:21 cover 100 billion stars for six days on each star. Fourteen 12:27 billion 737 million years. So I don't think you're going to get 12:31 bored in heaven. We have no idea The Bible says eye hath not seen 12:36 and ear has not heard, it hasn't even entered into the 12:40 heart of man the things which God has prepared for them that 12:43 love him. You know, incredible God, incredible creator, 12:48 incredible universe and we're told that Satan has worked 12:53 continually to eclipse the glories of the future world and 12:58 to so attract our minds to things of this world. He wants 13:02 to eclipse the glories of the future world. We're so busy, 13:06 we're so involved in the concerns of daily life and all 13:10 the activities and frustrations. We're told that in God's 13:14 presence is the fullness of joy, at his right hand are pleasures 13:18 forever more. The fullness of joy, do we have the fullness? 13:24 We have those moments where we have in our life the fullness of 13:30 joy but it isn't every day because we have to deal with 13:32 flat tires and all of the issues that we have to deal with in 13:38 life. But at his right hand are pleasures forever more, at his 13:45 the fullness of joy. So anyhow, we want to get into Orion as we 13:50 look at that galaxy... When we look at our galaxy we see stars 13:56 that you could make stick figures about. Orion would be a 14:00 man where you have two shoulder stars, he has three belt stars, 14:04 he has legs. We have the Big Dipper, we have Hercules, which 14:09 is again another man. We've got Virgo which is a lady. We have 14:13 Bootes which is a man, Bootes is a representation of Christ. 14:18 Bootes has a staff in one hand and a sickle in the other and so 14:23 we're going to be talking a little bit about the story of 14:25 salvation in the stars. It seems like God has told us the story 14:29 of salvation. But the constellation we're interested 14:32 in as Seventh-day Adventists, I get a lot of e-mails, what 14:36 about Orion because you know Ellen White indicated that the 14:40 New Jerusalem comes through Orion, it comes through the 14:44 opening in Orion. I can actually show you three openings in 14:48 Orion. I'm pretty sure I know which one she was talking about 14:52 because the Hubble wasn't working when she was living. 14:56 We've found some other openings there. But we're going to focus 15:02 on the most beautiful pictures of Orion. The actual points of 15:09 interest: if you look at the belt, the three belt stars, 15:12 right below the bottom belt star is the Horsehead nebula and 15:15 we're going to look at that and as you go down below that we 15:19 call it where the sword would be on Orion's hip. That would be 15:23 the sword area which we call the great nebula. It is also known 15:26 as M42 named after Messier, the Frenchman who was first to 15:32 observe it and name it, lettered it actually. He was actually 15:37 looking for comets. Messier was looking for comets and to be 15:43 famous you discover a comet and he had found over 100 objects 15:49 and he lettered them M1, M2, M3 all the way up to about 110 15:55 actually. This was M42 and it's known as the great nebula in 16:02 Orion. Let's look at that picture now, because Ellen White 16:06 said that there is a place of indescribable beauty whence 16:10 cometh the voice of God and that certainly is one glorious 16:15 picture to see. It is this fantastically beautiful place of 16:20 indescribable beauty whence cometh the voice of God. That would be a 16:23 current Hubble picture of Orion. In fact, people often ask how 16:27 true is the color from the Hubble? Well the pictures that 16:31 we're showing you are almost, most of them, very, very 16:34 accurate. I've taken a picture of Orion like that. Now the 16:38 Hubble's a million times better than I can because it can zoom 16:41 in so powerfully, but that over wide view, I've taken pictures 16:44 that look just every bit as good of Orion and the color is 16:47 accurate. Occasionally for research they would take 16:51 pictures because they want to know what gasses are present so 16:54 they might put a hydrogen alpha filter on the telescope and take 16:58 a picture of an object and say well we're going to assign this 17:02 color green. And they'll put an oxygen 2 filter on and say well 17:06 we'll assign this color blue. Put a nitrogen 3 filter on and 17:10 so they take usually about four pictures with different filters 17:14 and then they combine those and it shows them... each image will 17:19 show them what gasses are present in these stars. So there 17:24 are a few pictures, the rosette is one, the color is totally 17:29 artificial. Another picture that I know is artificial would be 17:34 the Cat's Eye nebula through the Hubble that shows very red but 17:37 it's actually not. Of course, we have other telescopes, the 17:41 infrared, ultra violet, Chandra, the Spencer telescope and 17:45 sometimes they'll actually combine pictures from three 17:49 different telescopes and really get the flavor of all the 17:52 different images there. So anyhow we're looking at the 17:55 great nebula in Orion. What's interesting, the very first 18:00 picture taken of Orion was in 1880 and we got that coming up. 18:04 This image of Orion in 1880, the first kind of a very crude 18:07 picture. You saw that previous one that glorious picture. 18:10 Here's 1880 and by 1883 cameras had improved, film had improved 18:15 or telescopes had improved. I'm not sure which it was. But here 18:21 you see quite a change in three years. I can imagine this 18:26 picture was on the news stand. Because, wow, our telescopes, 18:30 look what they've done now. This is the latest news of the day 18:34 in 1883. I can imagine people in the city on the street talking 18:38 Did you see the paper today? This would be something people 18:42 would be talking about. How would Ellen White respond 18:46 because God had given her visions of heaven and we saw a 18:51 beautiful picture of Orion but maybe He even gave her something 18:55 better than what the Hubble has seen there. What would she say? 19:00 She says, oh for language, Oh I wish I had language to express 19:05 the glories of the bright world to come. You can imagine. 19:10 People talk about that little image and she having seen the 19:14 the beautiful one. She says I long to be there and be with the 19:19 lovely Jesus who gave his life for me and be changed into his 19:23 glorious image. I begged of my attending angel to let me remain 19:27 in that place. I could not bear the thought of coming back to 19:32 this dark world again. I think of that 1883 picture. She may 19:37 have written about that, could very well be. In a little book 19:41 called My Life Today she is talking about heaven and she 19:45 there... 20:02 And that's from My Life Today. Well as we think about Orion, we 20:07 think about the New Jerusalem, the City of light. The New 20:09 Jerusalem doesn't need any light there, according to the 20:12 Bible. God is the light of it. What happens if we point our 20:15 telescope towards the New Jerusalem? Would God have to 20:19 cover that with a cloud. You know in Exodus 19 verse 9 it 20:22 says and the Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come to thee in a 20:26 thick cloud. In Revelation 22, the city does not need sun or 20:30 moon to shine in it for the glory of the Lord gives it light 20:34 and the Lamb is the light. In Deuteronomy 5 it says the Lord 20:39 said to Moses, I'm going to come to you in a dense cloud. Mount 20:43 Sinai was covered with smoke, the smoke billowed up from it 20:48 like smoke from a furnace. And going on, these words the Lord 20:53 spake unto all your assembly in the mount of the cloud of fire 20:58 and a cloud and the thick darkness. So what would happen 21:04 if we pointed our telescope there? Would God have to cover 21:09 that up. Well I have discovered something I think will amaze you 21:13 and it has to do with the Horsehead nebula. In fact, the 21:17 next image we have you see the Horsehead nebula. This is a 21:22 thick cloud. The Horsehead is humongous. Across the bridle 21:25 area where you put the bridle on that snout, you could put our 21:29 sun, all the planets, a hundred times our solar system with all 21:32 the planets would fit right across that area. The neck of 21:36 that horsehead would be about 30 trillion miles. It takes 21:39 about five years to cross that area. That is an extension of... 21:46 the lower part of this picture is just one big thick cloud and 21:51 you see how few stars there are between us and that thick cloud. 21:56 That takes light about 1,500 years to get here, about 1500 22:00 years away. In the lower part you see light coming out from 22:03 behind. Now we're going to take a wider view and now the 22:07 horsehead just practically disappears in this screen and 22:10 you see all the light coming out from behind that area. That area 22:16 is humongous and there is a lot of light coming out from behind 22:23 that and I actually have a little image of the size of that 22:30 Now in this image you see light, these arrows here, you see light 22:34 coming out from behind this cloud. Do you suppose that could 22:37 be the light of the New Jerusalem? This blue circle we 22:42 have shows you how big it is. A flash of lightning to go across 22:49 that area at 186,000 miles an hour, a flash of lightening 22:53 would take 300 years to cross this. So this is huge, this is 22:57 humongous in that area and it looks like a thick cloud that's 23:00 covering up and light is coming from behind it. That could 23:04 possibly be... That's right above the great nebula in Orion and 23:08 it's a fantastic sight. Now we have another image coming up 23:12 just to the left of the. I'm sorry. This is actually the 23:16 center part of the great nebula M42. This is probably the area 23:20 Ellen White was talking about. It's called the Fish's Mouth. 23:24 It's about 19 trillion miles from side to side. That dark 23:27 area is about 50 trillion miles up and down, 19 trillion side to 23:32 side. As the Hubble looked around that area it found some 23:38 amazing little images here which they call protoplys, 23:45 protoplanetary stars. The one over on the left looks like it 23:49 could have a moon going around it. The one on the right, that 23:53 large one, they think is the size of our whole solar system. 23:56 If we go back up to where the Horsehead nebula is you see 24:01 another opening. This is called the Flame nebula, just right 24:05 next to the Horsehead nebula. Then if we go down below the 24:09 great nebula in Orion, you see another object. It doesn't have 24:13 a name. It looks like the shuttle actually coming out of a 24:18 cloud. So it's an interstellar dust area there right below the 24:23 great nebula in Orion. We believe that the New Jerusalem 24:28 will come through the area of Orion and this has always been a 24:31 big interest to Seventh-day Adventists. It's the biggest, 24:36 the most spectacular. First of all the constellation has more 24:40 bright stars than any other constellation. Some astronomer 24:45 had written why so many super giant atomic torches could be in 24:49 this part of the sky, we don't know. The great nebula is 24:52 actually the brightest. You can actually see this with a hand 24:56 held binocular. If you look at Orion, you see the shoulders, 25:00 you see the three belt stars, you go down below the bottom 25:03 belt star which we call the sword, this man on his hip has 25:07 a sword and you can begin to see these clouds of gas. 25:12 Come to Colorado where we have some really dark skies. 25:16 If you're living in a city, you're not going to see very 25:19 much there, but the darker the sky the more you're going to 25:23 see. But it is a beautiful place as Ellen White said, A place of 25:28 indescribable beauty whence cometh the voice of God. We long 25:34 for that day. We live in this world where it seems like every 25:39 day things get worse. Our planet just seems like it's an upheaval 25:44 and I think it can't get worse and every morning when you turn 25:48 on the news, it seems like it's getting worse. Yes, folks, Jesus 25:53 is coming soon. We see the signs we know the signs. The end of 25:58 time it says before he comes there will be famines and 26:00 pestilence and earthquakes in divers places. Nation shall rise 26:05 against nation, kingdom against kingdom. We have seen like 26:09 earthquakes like we've never seen before. We had a whole 26:13 series of them, the one that devastated Haiti and then we had 26:18 one that followed in Chili and then we had New Zealand which 26:23 was a big earthquake and actually shifted the island 26:26 moved the island and actually shifted the pole of the earth 26:29 off. Then we had the big one that took out... you know, the 26:33 tsunami in Japan. So the Bible talks about last day events. 26:36 Folks, I think we're there. I think Jesus is coming soon. 26:40 So I would appeal to you, dear friend, not to get caught up in 26:44 the world, not to get caught up with the things of the world. 26:47 The Bible says we have overcome the world. I have said it before 26:52 in this series, we're going to say it again. We've overcome the 26:55 world. Folks what are the things of the world? I really have 26:59 concerns for Christians that can't get through the weekend 27:03 without a movie from Hollywood. How can a person have that stuff 27:08 in your home. The angels, the holiness of God, the angels 27:11 cover their faces when they speak his name. How can we 27:16 listen to cursing on our television sets. Folks I think 27:20 if you're so caught up in the world heaven may not be a joy 27:25 to you, it may be a torture to you. So my appeal is to get to 27:29 know the Lord. When Jesus comes he says come ye blessed of my 27:33 Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the 27:35 foundation of the world. We want to be among that group when 27:38 he says I know you. So get to know Jesus. Put away the world. 27:41 I want to thank you again for watching Heavens Declare. We'll 27:44 see you again the next week in the series. |
Revised 2016-08-24