Church & Faith at Pulpit Rock...: March 2010

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Pulpit Rock

There once was a large rock formation on a wooded path leading to a one room school house that captured the imagination of the children of the 1700s. In and on the rock they played, just like I and my schoolmates in the second grade did, pretending it was a pulpit with even a place for the choir off to the right side of the pulpit. This play pretense mirrored their adult church on Sunday.

Milky Way Explanation

Gazing out from within the Milky Way, our own galaxy's true structure is difficult to discern. But an ambitious survey effort with the Spitzer Space Telescope now offers convincing evidence that we live in a large galaxy distinguished by two main spiral arms (the Scutum-Centaurus and Perseus arms) emerging from the ends of a large central bar. In fact, from a vantage point that viewed our galaxy face-on, astronomers in distant galaxies would likely see the Milky Way as a two-armed barred spiral similar to this artist's illustration. Previous investigations have identified a smaller central barred structure and four spiral arms. Astronomers still place the Sun about a third of the way in from the Milky Way's outer edge, in a minor arm called the Orion Spur.