Delving Into Astronomy

Astronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects such as stars, planets, comets, and galaxies that originate outside the earth’s atmosphere. This is one of the oldest sciences where the early astronomers evaluated and made methodical observations of the night sky. Using the telescope, the astronomers could observe the objects in space and use celestial navigation; process where angles between celestial objects in the sky and the horizon are used to located the position of each planet in relation to where the sun is located. Now days, professional astronomers use astrophysics to understand the behavior, the physical properties, and dynamic processes of the celestial objects and phenomena. Over time the field of professional astronomy has advanced into two branches; the observational astronomy and the theoretical astronomy. In observational astronomy, the focus is on acquiring and analyzing data using the principles of physics. This data is received from the detection and analysis of the visible light given off by the electromagnetic spectrum and this can be observed from the earth’s surface. Other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are only observable from either high altitudes or from space. Different types of observational astronomy are radio astronomy, infrared astronomy, and optical astronomy. These types deal with the studies of radiation with wave lengths, the detection and analysis of infrared radiation, and the optical images made using digital detectors. With theoretical astronomy, astronomers use a variety of tools that include analytical models and computational numerical simulations. The analytical models give insight to the heart of what is going on where as the numerical models reveal the existence of the phenomena and describe the celestial objects. These theorists try to generate or modify models to take in account the new data and made minimal modifications to the model to fit the data. Some of the topics researched by theoretical astronomers include stellar dynamics, galaxy formation, large-scale structure of matter in the universe, origin of cosmic rays, and physical cosmology, including string cosmology and astroparticle physics. Astronomers use astrophysical relativity as a tool to gauge the properties of the large scale structures where gravitation plays a significant part in physical phenomena researched. Some of the studied theories and models in astronomy include the big bang, cosmic inflation, dark mater, black hole, and fundamental theories of physics. Further studies of astronomy include the solar astronomy; study of the sun and its impact on the earth, the planetary science where it examines the assembly of the planets, moons, dwarf planets, comets, asteroids and other bodies orbiting the sun, the stellar astronomy; study of the astrophysics of stars, and the galactic astronomy that studies the milky way, a barred spiral galaxy.