Macromarvels

Here are some examples of what Thomas Dubay calls "Macromarvels" ((from The Evidential Power of Beauty):

• The largest star thus far discovered is the super giant Betelgeuse ("close" to us at 310 light years), which has a diameter of 400 million miles, that is, about 500 times that of the sun.

• [Matter] is so bursting with potential that an ounce of anything at all, be it stick or stone, has energy enough to keep a 100-watt bulb burning for approximately 100 million years.

• "In the high temperatures of the sun, approximately 657 million tons of hydrogen are converted into 653 million tons of helium each second. The missing four million tons of mass are discharged as radiant energy. Such reactions are, quite literally, nuclear burning." To lose 4 million tons of its own substance every second of its existence would seem to suggest that the sun will vanish before long. No worry. "Over the next 6 billion years, this rate of use will cost the sun only one forty-thousandth of its enormous mass." - Science Digest, Nov 1982

• [P]ulsars, rotating collapsed neutron stars, are corpses of stars that were about double our sun in mass. As a result of undergoing a supernova explosion, their initially immense masses have shrunk to about six to twelve miles in diameter. We cannot, of course, imagine this incredible density. All of this is amazing enough, but we may add another aspect at which to marvel. Pulsars spin thirty and more times a second. Considering their immense density, to find that they could spin once in a second invites amazement.

• Neutron star: Originally the size and mass of our sun, this pulsar is now compacted to an average modern city, so that "a teaspoon of its matter would weigh a billion tons". - 365 Starry Nights, Chet Raymo
  

The size of our universe (from "The Evidential Power of Beauty" by Thomas Dubay)

Next we move out into our home galaxy, the Milky Way, our spiral of 2 or 3 billion stars like our sun ... You and I are spinning at an immense rate of speed in this wild cosmic joy ride, with our galaxy being from edge to edge approximately 100,000 light years across. It would take our jumbo jet 100,000 million years to make the trip once around. The other star closest to us, Alpha Centauri, is four light years away, and it would take a persevering pilot 5.5 million years to make a one-way trip to this, our celestial neighbor. To stretch our minds a bit further: our known universe is approximately 12 to 15 billion light-years to its edges, and it is continually getting larger at a tremendous rate of speed.
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[A]stronomically speaking our own galaxy is very small indeed. Astronomers have recently discovered the largest galaxy thus far known. In a cluster of galaxies known as Abell 2029 there is one that is sixty times the size of our own. Possessing more than 100 trillion stars, it is about 1 billion light years from us. Beyond Abell 2029 there are billions of additional galaxies and stars in all directions.
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In an effort to aid our imagination someone has estimated that there are about ten thousand grains of sand in a handful, and further, that there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand found on all beaches of the earth. When one considers that America has approximately eighty-four thousand miles of shore line ... and when we add to that the far longer beaches in other countries, and the thousands upon thousands of lakes over the globe, we arrive at a considerable amount of visible matter--not to mention the far greater amount of "dark matter" we cannot see.

Sublime music

"Is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from which we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No, they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our Home; they are the voice of Angels, or the Magnificat of Saints, or the living laws of Divine Governance, or the Divine Attributes; something are they besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter,--though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting them." - (Cardinal) John Henry Newman

On Beauty

Beauty they say is in the eye of the beholder ... This is true, but it is also true that beauty is in the eye of all beholders ...

What I mean by this is that there is subjective beauty, which is that first type, and is limited to a particular individual's tastes. But moreover there is objective beauty, which is that second type, that is universal, and which transcends time and place, and is recognized by all "beholders" as beautiful.

Who can dispute the inherent beauty of a perfect red rose, or a majestic sunset that washes the sky with its reddish-orange dye ... Or the mysterious, magical melodies of a Mozart concerto or the raw, emotive power of a Beethoven movement ...

No-one, I contend, unless he be insane, or inane, or maybe even untutored in the ability to recognize that objective beauty. In other words, that ability to see and appreciate true, objective beauty, I contend, is innate in each of us, unless it has been stifled or thwarted by some experience or entity that is ... well, ugly!

For an example of truly beautiful art, see http://artrenewal.org.