A science about the movement, distances and sizes of the Sun, Moon, stars, planets, meteors, constellations and comets within our and other solar systems.
Thousands of years ago some groups of stars were given names because their shape was similar to a bear, a dog, a lion or perhaps a plough!
Astronomers aren’t stargazers. Or, at least, there’s no longer any need for them to be. If you think an astronomer treks up mountains to spend night after night behind the eyepiece of a giant telescope, think again. These days telescopes can be controlled remotely, so it’s common for modern astronomers to simply make requests for observations and then download computer-generated data and images the next morning for their analysis. That includes space telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope.
People very often confuse astronomy with astrology. Every professional astronomer has had to hear someone say to them, “so you’re an astrologer, right?” Astrology and astronomy are not the same thing, but they used to be. Observational astronomy can be traced back to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia as far back as 3,000 B.C., but the calculating of solar eclipses, the movements of the planets and theories about how the night sky works was the job of ancient astrologers who presumed that celestial events and alignments had a direct impact on human affairs.
Modern astrologers attempt to do something similar, making predictions about human lives based on pseudoscience. Astrology is not a science.
Credit : Space
Picture Credit : Google
