Heavens Declare, The

Orion

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Jim Burr

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Series Code: HDS

Program Code: HDS000012A


00:02 ¤ ¤
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.


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Revised 2016-08-24