Portal:Astronomy

Portal topics: Activities; Culture; Geography; Health; History; Mathematics; Nature; People; Philosophy; Religion; Society; Technology; Random portal

The Astronomy Portal

Introduction

Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, nebulae, galaxies, meteoroids, asteroids, and comets. Relevant phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, quasars, blazars, pulsars, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, astronomy studies everything that originates beyond Earth's atmosphere. Cosmology is a branch of astronomy that studies the universe as a whole.

Astronomy is one of the oldest natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history made methodical observations of the night sky. These include the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas. In the past, astronomy included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy, and the making of calendars.

Professional astronomy is split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects. This data is then analyzed using basic principles of physics. Theoretical astronomy is oriented toward the development of computer or analytical models to describe astronomical objects and phenomena. These two fields complement each other. Theoretical astronomy seeks to explain observational results and observations are used to confirm theoretical results.

Astronomy is one of the few sciences in which amateurs play an active role. This is especially true for the discovery and observation of transient events. Amateur astronomers have helped with many important discoveries, such as finding new comets. (Full article...)

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various astronomy-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Calendrical functions of the Berlin Gold Hat c. 1000 BC (from History of astronomy)
Image 2Historical accuracy of atomic clocks from NIST. (from Theoretical astronomy)
Image 3Arabic astrolabe from 1079 to 1080 AD (from History of astronomy)
Image 4Historical Jantar Mantar observatory in Jaipur, India (from History of astronomy)
Image 5An assembly in Estonia to observe meteors (from Observational astronomy)
Image 6Sir Patrick Moore was one of the world's leading popularisers of astronomy. (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 7Artist conception of the Big Bang cosmological model, the most widely accepted out of all in physical cosmology (neither time nor size to scale) (from Physical cosmology)
Image 8Portrait of the Flemish astronomer Ferdinand Verbiest who became Head of the Mathematical Board and Director of the Observatory of the Chinese emperor in 1669 (from Astronomer)
Image 9ALMA is the world's most powerful telescope for studying the Universe at submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths. (from Observational astronomy)
$Image 1050 cm refracting telescope at Nice Observatory (from Observational astronomy)$

Image 1050 cm refracting telescope at Nice Observatory (from Observational astronomy)
Image 11One of the Oldest Observatories in South America is the Quito Astronomical Observatory, founded in 1873 and located 12 minutes south of the Equator in Quito, Ecuador. The Quito Astronomical Observatory is the National Observatory of Ecuador and is located in the Historic Center of Quito and is managed by the National Polytechnic School. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 12Babylonian tablet in the British Museum recording Halley's comet in 164 BC (from History of astronomy)
Image 13The Hubble Space Telescope (from History of astronomy)
Image 14Sunset at the equinox from the prehistoric site of Pizzo Vento at Fondachelli Fantina, Sicily (from History of astronomy)
Image 15The Crab Nebula as seen in various wavelengths (from Observational astronomy)
Image 16"El Caracol" observatory temple at Chichen Itza, Mexico (from History of astronomy)
Image 17Comparison of CMB (Cosmic microwave background) results from satellites COBE, WMAP and Planck documenting a progress in 1989–2013 (from History of astronomy)
Image 18History of the Universe – gravitational waves are hypothesized to arise from cosmic inflation, a rapidly accelerated expansion just after the Big Bang (from Physical cosmology)
Image 19The Antikythera Mechanism was an analog computer from 150 to 100 BC designed to calculate the positions of astronomical objects. (from History of astronomy)
Image 20Map of the Milky Way Galaxy, with the constellations that cross the galactic plane in each direction and the known prominent components annotated including main arms, spurs, bar, nucleus/bulge, notable nebulae and globular clusters (from History of astronomy)
Image 219th-century diagram of the positions of the seven planets on 18 March 816, from the Leiden Aratea (from History of astronomy)
Image 22Segment of the astronomical ceiling of Senenmut's Tomb (circa 1479–1458 BCE), depicting constellations, protective deities, and twenty-four segmented wheels for the hours of the day and the months of the year (from History of astronomy)
Image 23Overview of types of observational astronomy by observed wavelengths and their observability. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 24A voting session is conducted in 2006 International Astronomical Union's general assembly for determining a new definition of a planet (from Astronomer)
Image 25The Nebra sky disk, Germany, 1800 - 1600 BC (from History of astronomy)
Image 26Ultra HD photography taken at La Silla Observatory (from Observational astronomy)
Image 27Places like Paranal Observatory offer crystal clear skies for observing astronomical objects with or without instruments. (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 28Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (from Observational astronomy)
Image 29An amateur astrophotography setup with an automated guide system connected to a laptop (from Observational astronomy)
Image 30The main platform at La Silla hosts a huge range of telescopes with which astronomers can explore the Universe. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 31An image of the Cat's Paw Nebula created combining the work of professional and amateur astronomers. The image is the combination of the 2.2-metre MPG/ESO telescope of the La Silla Observatory in Chile and a 0.4-meter amateur telescope. (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 32The Oort cloud, one of the most successful theoretical model about the Solar System (from Theoretical astronomy)
Image 33The Northern Hemisphere page from Johann Bayer's 1661 edition of Uranometria - the first atlas to have star charts covering the entire celestial sphere (from History of astronomy)
Image 34Amateur astronomy groups are often involved in outreach in order to introduce astronomy to the general public (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 35Southern Hemisphere (from History of astronomy)
Image 36Amateur astronomer recording observations of the sun. (from Amateur astronomy)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

Featured article - show another

This is a Featured article, which represents some of the best content on English Wikipedia.

The Kreutz sungrazers (/ˈkrɔɪts/ ^ⓘ KROYTS) are a family of sungrazing comets, characterized by orbits taking them extremely close to the Sun at perihelion. At the far extreme of their orbits, aphelion, Kreutz sungrazers can be a hundred times farther from the Sun than the Earth is, while their distance of closest approach can be less than twice the Sun's radius. They are believed to be fragments of one large comet that broke up several centuries ago and are named for German astronomer Heinrich Kreutz, who first demonstrated that they were related. These sungrazers make their way from the distant outer Solar System to the inner Solar System, to their perihelion point near the Sun, and then leave the inner Solar System in their return trip to their aphelion.

Several members of the Kreutz family have become great comets, occasionally visible near the Sun in the daytime sky. The most recent of these was Comet Ikeya–Seki in 1965, which may have been one of the brightest comets in the last millennium. It has been suggested that another cluster of bright Kreutz system comets may begin to arrive in the inner Solar System in the next few decades. (Full article...)

List of featured articles

edit

Did you know - show different entries

... that 12th-century Muslim scientist Al-Khazini, who proposed a theory of gravitation long before Isaac Newton, was, in his early life, a slave of the Seljuq Turks?
... that Kepler-47c is a circumbinary planet orbiting in the habitable zone of Kepler-47, a binary star system?
... that two high school students used the automated telescope at Leuschner Observatory to record the earliest images of supernova SN 1994I?
... that the Kuiper crater in the Kuiper quadrangle, named after Dutch American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, has the highest albedo recorded on Mercury?
...that Mt. Olympus Mons on Mars is the highest peak in the solar system?

More Did you know facts

More Did you know (auto generated)

... that Michael Collins has been called "one of the best clarinettists walking the planet" by The Times?
... that fictional depictions of Jupiter have portrayed human habitation on the planet and its moons both by altering the environment to suit humans and altering humans to be suited to the environment?
... that the Passive Seismic Experiment Package recorded one of the first instances of humans littering on another planetary body?
... that in early depictions of Uranus in fiction, the planet was portrayed as solid
... that Jessen's icosahedron has been used for both the "Skwish" children's toy and a NASA proposal for a "super ball bot" to cushion space landers on other planets?
... that Nandivada Rathnasree, who ran Delhi's planetarium, proposed that astronomers could be taught using India's stone-built observatories?

edit

WikiProjects

WikiProject Astronomy	WikiProject Solar System



WikiProject Cosmology	WikiProject Spaceflight

edit

Selected image - show another

Credit: NASA / ESA / STScI

HD 28527 is a star in the constellation Taurus, and a member of the Hyades open cluster. It is faintly visible to the naked eye with an apparent visual magnitude of 4.78. The distance to this star, as determined from its parallax shift of 22 mas, is 148 light years.

More selected pictures

Read more

edit

Astronomy News

20 February 2024 –: Astronomers identify the most luminous object ever observed, QSO J0529-4351, a quasar that accretes around one solar mass per day. (The Guardian) (Nature.com)
24 November 2023 –: Astronomers at the Telescope Array Project in Utah, United States, observe the second largest cosmic ray ever detected, the so-called Amaterasu particle, with an energy of 244 EeV. (Cosmos Magazine)

edit

May anniversaries

1 May 1959 – The former Beltsville Center is renamed to Goddard Space Flight Center in honor of Dr. Robert H. Goddard, rocket pioneer who achieved first launch of a liquid-fueled rocket
4 May 1967 – Lunar Orbiter 4 is launched to perform a photographic survey of lunar surface features
7 May 1975 – Explorer 53 (SAS-C), a NASA X-ray astronomy space telescope, is launched from the San Marco Range in Kenya, Africa
7 May 1997 – English-language French science fiction action film, The Fifth Element is released showing passenger inter-constellation vehicles, spacefighter craft, and various non-human creatures
14 May 1935 – The planetarium at Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, California opens
14 May 1973 – The first American space station, Skylab, is launched
18 May 1969 – The Apollo 10 human spaceflight is launched, testing all aspects of the lunar landing mission, except the actual lunar landing
20 May 1978 – Pioneer Venus is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida becoming the first spacecraft placed in orbit around Venus
30 May 1971 – Mariner 9 robotic space probe is launched becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Mars

More anniversaries

edit

Space-related Portals

edit

Astronomical events

All times UT unless otherwise specified.

3 May, 22:32	Moon occults Saturn
4 May, 18:55	Moon occults Neptune
4 May, 19:58	Eta Aquariids peak
5 May, 02:26	Moon occults Mars
5 May, 22:11	Moon at perigee
8 May, 03:22	New moon
9 May, 20:59	Mercury at greatest western elongation
13 May, 10:45	Uranus at conjunction
17 May, 19:00	Moon at apogee
18 May, 18:02	Jupiter at conjunction
23 May, 13:53	Full moon
31 May, 08:09	Moon occults Saturn