What is astronomy?
Astronomy is the study of heavenly objects, phenomena and origin. One of the oldest sciences, astronomy was practiced since prehistoric times. Modern astronomy depends on highly adopted physical theories, such as Newton's laws of movement and general relativity. In the past, astronomy was something that anyone could do, and many fortune tellers and sages for themselves reputation using stars for useful functions such as narration, such as the season, or navigation by sea. Columbus and his contemporaries used the stars to navigate the Atlantic Ocean.
Only until the Renaissance began the theory of heliocentricity in astronomy, the idea that the Earth orbits the sun rather than the contrary, gaining a popular currency. The telescope reflections were invented at the beginning of the 16th century, and Galileo Galilei used them to submit detailed observations of our moon, which revealed that it was mountainous, and watched Jupiter's four largest months, now named Galileanměsí in his honor. Newton improved to Galileo's design and invented reflectsThe binoculars that are still used in optical telescopes.
In 1781 he discovered Sir William Herschel the Uranus planet. In 1838 there was a parallax - a slight difference in the stellar position due to the position of the ground in its orbit - used to precisely determine the distance of the stars. Neptune was discovered shortly afterwards. Pluto was discovered only recently as 1930.
Modern astronomy is very complicated and expensive. Instead of observing only light rays we observe radar, infrared, X -ray and even space rays. The orbital observatory, such as Hubble Space Telescope, has created the best images, include extremely high -resolution photos with other galaxies.
In the mid -20th century it was found that the universe was expanding. This, along with other evidence, led the theory of the Big Bang that the entire universe began as a point particle of extreme density. Later observation of cosmic microwaveThis has confirmed this background and the Big Bang continues as the primary theory of cosmological origin to this day.
The future of astronomy consists in the development of new observational technologies. One interest is interferometry, sometimes called "hypertelescopes" that use a network of binoculars that cooperate to solve images. These could develop to a point where we can directly observe extrasolar planets with binoculars, instead of detecting them from their gravitational signature.