Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Astronomy

Astronomy is a natural science which is the study of celestial objects, the physics, chemistry, and evolution of such objects, and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth, including supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. A related but distinct subject, cosmology, is concerned with studying the universe as a whole.

Astronomy is the oldest of the natural sciences, dating back to antiquity, with its origins in the religious, mythological, cosmological, calendrical, and astrological beliefs and practices of pre-history: vestiges of these are still found in astrology, a discipline long interwoven with public and governmental astronomy, and not completely disentangled from it until a few centuries ago in the Western World. In some cultures, astronomical data was used for astrological prognostication.

Ancient astronomers were able to differentiate between stars and planets, as stars remain relatively fixed over the centuries while planets will move an appreciable amount during a comparatively short time.

Early cultures identified celestial objects with gods and spirits. They related these objects to phenomena such as rain, drought, seasons, and tides. It is generally believed that the first "professional" astronomers were priests, and that their understanding of the "heavens" was seen as "divine", hence astronomy's ancient connection to what is now called astrology. Ancient structures with possibly astronomical alignments probably fulfilled both astronomical and religious functions.

Some of the most important astronomers in history are: Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Tycho Brahe, Isaac Newton, Henrietta Swan Levitt, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. 

We think astronomy has been and it still is a very important science and we have to take it in count at the moment of give our opinion about it and even start to study it.

 By: Eduardo Hdz & Diego Tonatiuh Lopez.

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