Our Awesome Universe - Church of God - NEO

NORTH AMERICAN NEBULA, LEFT. So called for its resemblance tothat continent. A dense cloud of dust between the nebula and earthblocks out port of the nebula - creating the appearance of a "Gulfof Mexico" and the "Atlantic Ocean." Less dense dust in the spacebetween the nebula and earth scatters all but the red light. Thenebula is so for away, that light traveling at 186,000 miles persecond, which left the nebula around 1000 S.c. is only reaching ustoday.RING NEBULA IN LYRA, ABOVE. This ring, with only a thousandatoms of gas per cubic centimeter, for surpasses most vacuumsattainable on earth.PLANETARY NEBULA IN AQUARIUS, BELOW. Some recent estimationsare that it is 390 light years away. Its diameter is a mere 1 parsec or3.26 light years. In miles, the distance is over 19,500,000,000,000trillion miles from end to end lCopyright 1959, 1965, Californ ia Institute of Technologyand Carnegie Institution of Washington