Cat's Eye Nebula

merican@

As human beings we often yearn for signs from the Almighty simply to reinforce our state of fluctuating imam. This is so true for me.

My wife says I’m in the 50-50 category with that faith swinging like a pendulum where my chances of going to heaven is equally as great as my chances of going to hell. There’s nothing like an in-house critique to remind you of Armageddon.

Anyway sometime in 1999, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) posted a picture on the internet taken from their Hubble Space Telescope of an exploding star (below). They called it “Cat’s Eye Nebula”. [please go to: http://antwrp. gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap991031. html]



For me personally, it looks more like a beautiful rose formed of expanding scarlet light. A divine ornament in the heavens and without doubt a testament to the existence of the many signs from Allah.

When I see the above and read the following verses from the Holy Quran, I cannot help but be inspired that for all my relative despair in this temporal world there is hope and that salvation is possible with a firmness of belief that there is indeed a single incomparable Creator who hears and listens to all His creations:

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 فَإِذَا انشَقَّتِ السَّمَاءُ فَكَانَتْ وَرْدَةً كَالدِّهَانِ  Â



Then when the heaven is rent asunder, and it becomes rosy or red like red-oil, or red hide
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فَبِأَيِّ آلَاءِ رَبِّكُمَا تُكَذِّبَان  Â


Then which of the Blessings of your Lord will you both (jinn and men) deny?
Surah Ar-Rahman (55:37-38)


And perhaps as a fitting requiem to that NASA’s discovery, I leave you with the following youtube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kvg7Qo7IIQ&feature=related


Salams
Megat Shaharuddin Merican