Wednesday, January 30, 2008

What is Observational astronomy?

Among all kind of scientific discoveries and inventions made by people on this earth, astronomy is one of the greatest. Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences in this earth and dates back to the period before Jesus Christ. People started observing the night sky from trees , high grounds and tall buildings and at one point of time scientist Copernicus came to a conclusion that the sun revolve around the earth. After some time the theory of Copernicus was proved wrong by Italian scientist, Galileo and he clarified that its is not the sun that rotates around the earth, but it is the earth that rotates around the sun. In early days, people used to observe night sky by naked eyes and slowly they discovered telescope.

With the advancement of science of technology, the concept of technology has changed a lot. Different types of astronomy are now practiced by scientists, but observational astronomy is still the most important part of this wonderful scientific study.

Observational astronomy is the oldest form of astronomy and it mainly deals with regular observation of movement of celestial objects and predicting the effect of such movement. Prediction of lunar and solar eclipse is totally dependent on observational astronomy. High-powered telescopes and various astronomical apparatus are used in observational astronomy to acquire accurate data about movement of celestial objects. Astrophysics is also an important part of observational astronomy.

Data that are observed through telescopes and astronomical apparatus are recorded and plotted in graphs and studying those graphs scientists draw conclusion about things that are going to happen in the space and solar system. Italian Galileo was the first person in the earth to record data that he observed through his telescope.

Observational Astronomy

# Radio astronomy
# Infrared astronomy
# Optical astronomy
# Ultraviolet astronomy
# X-ray astronomy
# Gamma-ray astronomy

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