Portal:Astronomy

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The Astronomy Portal

Introduction

Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and 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 1The 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 2A voting session is conducted in 2006 International Astronomical Union's general assembly for determining a new definition of a planet (from Astronomer)
Image 3Historical Jantar Mantar observatory in Jaipur, India (from History of astronomy)
Image 4Hubble Space Telescope (from History of astronomy)
Image 5The Oort cloud, one of the most successful theoretical model about the Solar System (from Theoretical astronomy)
Image 6The Crab Nebula as seen in various wavelengths (from Observational astronomy)
Image 79th-century diagram of the positions of the seven planets on 18 March 816, from the Leiden Aratea (from History of astronomy)
Image 8Segment 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 9Babylonian tablet in the British Museum recording Halley's comet in 164 BC (from History of astronomy)
Image 10An 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 11Amateur astronomy groups are often involved in outreach in order to introduce astronomy to the general public (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 12Map 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 13Sir Patrick Moore was one of the world's leading popularisers of astronomy. (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 14Calendrical functions of the Berlin Gold Hat c. 1000 BC (from History of astronomy)
Image 15An assembly in Estonia to observe meteors (from Observational astronomy)
Image 16An amateur astrophotography setup with an automated guide system connected to a laptop. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 17Southern Hemisphere (from History of astronomy)
Image 18Mayall telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (from Observational astronomy)
Image 19Amateur astronomer recording observations of the sun. (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 20Artist 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 21The main platform at La Silla hosts a huge range of telescopes with which astronomers can explore the Universe. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 22Sunset at the equinox from the prehistoric site of Pizzo Vento at Fondachelli Fantina, Sicily (from History of astronomy)
Image 23The Nebra sky disk, Germany, 1800 - 1600 BC (from History of astronomy)
Image 24The Antikythera Mechanism was an analog computer from 150 to 100 BC designed to calculate the positions of astronomical objects. (from History of astronomy)
Image 25"El Caracol" observatory temple at Chichen Itza, Mexico (from History of astronomy)
Image 26ALMA is the world's most powerful telescope for studying the Universe at submillimeter and millimeter wavelengths. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 27One 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 28Historical accuracy of atomic clocks from NIST. (from Theoretical astronomy)
$Image 2950 cm refracting telescope at Nice Observatory. (from Observational astronomy)$

Image 2950 cm refracting telescope at Nice Observatory. (from Observational astronomy)
Image 30Places like Paranal Observatory offer crystal clear skies for observing astronomical objects with or without instruments. (from Amateur astronomy)
Image 31Arabic astrolabe from 1079 to 1080 AD (from History of astronomy)
Image 32Comparison of CMB (Cosmic microwave background) results from satellites COBE, WMAP and Planck documenting a progress in 1989–2013 (from History of astronomy)
Image 33History 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 34Portrait 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 35Ultra HD photography taken at La Silla Observatory. (from Observational astronomy)

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Featured article - show another

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

A supernova (pl.: supernovae or supernovas) is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last evolutionary stages of a massive star or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion. The original object, called the progenitor, either collapses to a neutron star or black hole, or is completely destroyed to form a diffuse nebula. The peak optical luminosity of a supernova can be comparable to that of an entire galaxy before fading over several weeks or months.

The last supernova directly observed in the Milky Way was Kepler's Supernova in 1604, appearing not long after Tycho's Supernova in 1572, both of which were visible to the naked eye. The remnants of more recent supernovae have been found, and observations of supernovae in other galaxies suggest they occur in the Milky Way on average about three times every century. A supernova in the Milky Way would almost certainly be observable through modern astronomical telescopes. The most recent naked-eye supernova was SN 1987A, which was the explosion of a blue supergiant star in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite of the Milky Way. (Full article...)

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Did you know - show different entries

... that British mathematician Margaret Meyer was the first woman to be elected to the Royal Astronomical Society?
... that the star cluster Messier 103 can be observed with the use of binoculars?
... that NASA has plans to tug an asteroid to the Moon?
... that MOA-2009-BLG-387Lb is the eleventh planet discovered using the gravitational microlensing phenomenon?
... that the first Dutch satellite, the Astronomical Netherlands Satellite, had the Main Belt asteroid 9996 ANS named after it?

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... that the active galaxy 3C 120 was given the variable-star designation BW Tauri because of its variability in the visible spectrum?
... that in early depictions of Uranus in fiction, the planet was portrayed as solid
... that The City in the Middle of the Night, a 2019 climate-fiction novel by Charlie Jane Anders, is set on a tidally locked planet?
... that by naming her album Planet Her, Doja Cat was "just trying to be cute" and was not promoting a feminist agenda nor a planet exclusively for women?
... that Nandivada Rathnasree, who ran Delhi's planetarium, proposed that astronomers could be taught using India's stone-built observatories?
... 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?

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WikiProjects

WikiProject Astronomy	WikiProject Solar System



WikiProject Cosmology	WikiProject Spaceflight

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Credit: NASA / ESA / G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz / R. Bouwens, Leiden University / the HUDF09 Team

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field (HXDF), released on September 25, 2012, is an image of a portion of space in the center of the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field image. It covers an area of 2.3 arcminutes by 2 arcminutes, or approximately 80% of the area of the HUDF. The HXDF contains approximately 5,500 galaxies, the oldest of which are seen as they were 13.2 billion years ago.

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Astronomy News

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)
14 June 2023 –: Astronomers report that the presence of phosphates on Enceladus, moon of the planet Saturn, has been detected, completing the discovery of all the basic chemical ingredients for life on the moon. (New York Times)
12 June 2023 – Discoveries of exoplanets: Astronomers announce in the journal Nature Astronomy the discovery of BEBOP-1c, an exoplanet orbiting the binary star system, TOI-1338. The system is the second discovered to have more than one circumbinary planet. (Space.com)

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December anniversaries

7 December 1972 – The “Blue Marble” photograph is taken by the Apollo 17 crew
8 December 1992 – Galileo completes the second Earth flyby
14 December 1962 – Mariner 2 becomes the first space probe to perform a flyby of a planet, when it passes within 35,000 kilometers of Venus
17 December 1917 – “2001: A Space Odyssey” science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke is born
19 December 2013 – Gaia is launched for the mission to study billions of stars in the Milky Way
21 December 1968 – Apollo 8, is launched with the first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth orbit, reach the Moon, orbit it, and return safely to Earth
27 December 1571 – Astronomer, mathematician, and astrologer Johannes Kepler is born