Nowhere is the awesomeness of God more clearly visible than in the spectacular sight and majestic beauty of the Universe, showing various celestial bodies that are beyond man's grasp to fully comprehend in their complexities.
In one particular spot in the Universe, some 17,000 light years away from Earth (equivalent to 99,960 trillion miles or 161,500 trillion kilometers), the affirmation of God is all the more overwhelming.
When NASA aimed one of its most powerful telescopes—the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array or NuSTAR—at a pulsar or neutron star called PSR B1509-58, the astronomers were only expecting to see the remains of a dying star.
But what the telescope picked up was more than that. It showed a spectral vision of an outstretched hand—the "Hand of God" itself as many people are now calling it.
The "hand" is believed to be the remnants of a dying that star that exploded in its final moment, ejecting an enormous cloud of material.
The cloud of material when viewed via high-energy X-rays shows up as a green, red and blue hand, according to NuSTAR telescope principal investigator Fiona Harrison, of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
According to Harrison, the pulsar—or the remains of the dying star—spins at an incredible speed of 7 times per second, "blowing a wind of particles into material ejected during the star's death throes."
"As these particles interact with nearby magnetic fields, they produce an X-ray glow in the shape of a hand," she said as quoted by the Daily Express.
On its website, NASA explains that "neutron stars are created when massive stars run out of fuel and collapse."
The space agency estimated that the "Hand of God" created by the PSR B1509-58 pulsar is only 1,700 years old.
NASA theorised that the pulsar's powerful spinning motion is caused by its intense magnetic field, estimated to be "15 trillion times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field."
The space agency said the "combination of rapid rotation and ultra-strong magnetic field makes B1509 one of the most powerful electromagnetic generators in the galaxy."
Scientists could not determine whether the ejected material actually assumes the shape of a hand, or whether the material's interaction with the pulsar's particles causes the hand's appearance.
"We don't know if the hand shape is an optical illusion," Hongjun An, of McGill University in Montreal, said.
Indeed, even the brightest human mind could not fathom such an incredible sight. A self-proclaimed pastor called Smote73 could only say in a blog post: "This image shows God is everywhere in the universe. Perhaps showing His hand many light years away is to remind us He's always there."
