Astronomy, is the study of all extra terrestrial objects and events that happen “out there”.
Until the invention of the telescope in the 17th century, (1609) astronomy was primarily concerned with noting and predicting the positions of the Sun, Moon, and planets, originally for calendars and astrological purposes and later for navigational uses and scientific interest.
The amount of things now studied is much broader and includes the solar system, the stars that make up the Milky Way Galaxy, and other, more distant galaxies.
A major undertaking of astronomy is working out distances.
Without a knowledge of astronomical distances, the size of an object in space would remain nothing more than a dot of brightness denoting a star could.
Our Milky Way Solar System BEGAN 4.57 billion years ago, when it condensed within a large cloud of gas and dust.
I can still not understand this concept.
Our planet was formed by millions of rocks colliding and adhering together?
If we look at rocky planets, they are pockmarked with craters. The “rock” that collided with them disintegrated on impact.
I am suppose to believe that rocks hurtling through space at stupid speeds collide and “Stick Together”
Okay, the close up of the Asteroid Dimorphos showed so many small rocks seemingly “stuck to the surface”.
Gravitational attraction holds the planets in their orbits around the Sun. Which means they can not fall down, or up
It is predicted Jupiter has a rocky core ranging from 12 to 45 times the size of the Earth.
Flying above Saturn’s rings
Data acquired on July 26 2009 by Cassini’s narrow angle camera. The rings are illuminated with sunlight angled edge-on to the ring plane (Saturn 2009 equinox) making vertical structures in the B Ring visible. Source imagery scale is approximately 2 km/pixel. The images are in grayscale and reprojected to a ring-cylindrical projection. Horizontal (perpendicular to the ringlets) instrument noise is visible and is not indicative of any natural properties of the rings.
This is getting far too highbrow!
I do believe that Archimedes found his in the bath, not a very sensible place to keep your telescope but what do I know?
There’s an excellent book by the late Sir Patrick Moore and the increasingly hairy Brian May called Bang! Tremendous photos.
(Funnily enough I had a client also called Brian May. As part of one piece of work for this client I needed to fly out to Chicago. Incredibly, as we got off the plane I saw the other, slightly more famous, Brian May get off my flight from first class. How strange.)
