The night sky has always been a source of my endless wonder and speculation. It is the origin of innumerable number of myths, legends and other stories. Yet while the number of ideas and answers to the mystery of the sky is unfathomable, so is the number of stars out there.

When I was a little girl, I always used to do star gazing with my dad. I only saw a small amount of stars (which can be seen by the naked eye). In fact it is an amount so small that it is a comparable to a handful of sand on the beach. While the exact number can't be known just yet, many estimates have been given. Most of them, with the exception of the Sun, are trillions of miles away and because they are so far, they seem to us like little specks of light, but in actuality they can be millions of miles wide in diameter. Stars are located in galaxies, but a galaxy contains more than just stars. Clouds of dust and gas, called nebulae, are where stars are born.

In our galaxy alone, the Milky Way, there is a predicted 3 billion to 100 billion stars. So while the stories and myths live on about the night sky, the exact number of stars is still not known, as space is truly and absolutely the final frontier.

"The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination."

There you have it -- space is big, probably too big for us to be messing around in its dark expanses. Nonetheless, authors and filmmakers have devised countless adventures that take place far from our world. In many of these stories, the sheer bigness of it all doesn't seem to present a great obstacle to travelers. No one has much trouble getting across the universe in the Star Wars or Star Trek movies, what with modern conveniences like warp drives and light speed. Teleportation devices are also handy, provided you don't go in the pod at the same time as an insect.

Is there a humbling religious perspective on the exploration of outer space? What about the questions that drive our imaginations - the possibility of life on other planets -- even to consider going there? What about other questions involving our comprehension of the immensity of the universe and humanity's tiny place in it? The universe to me is profoundly humbling, and the vastness of the creation a testimony to the infinite power and majesty of the one who called it into being. This sense of our smallness and God's unlimited magnificence is important for us to realize.