Let us not confuse Astrology with astronomy; "Astrology" is not the same thing as current day astronomy. It is the oldest skill. ("Astronomy" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). But at all levels, it is the survey of the heavens. It is an endeavor to understand the make-up and the story of the cosmos. It is our tool for unlocking that learning. Amateur astronomy is very popular in most cities and small towns. It is one of those hobbies in which I would like to have participated. It is a superb hobby that is enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds. It is the greatest and oldest hobby of all time. Amateur astronomy is exposed to more people, as an individual is less likely to be discouraged by the need to learn how to locate objects in the night sky before being able to see them. Some magazines and periodicals are printed forums of the activities relating to Amateur Astronomers around the world. They are user supported publications. Amateur astronomy is practiced as a hobby.

It is often a pleasure as it may be a way to act scientifically. It is, as it turns out, a pastime to be shared. It is changing and we need to broaden our understanding variations so that we can make the improvements as they become available and fit our needs. Astronomy is gaining importance from a scientific point of view. Amateur astrology is a lot more than just looking at extraterrestrial matter with telescopes and binoculars, although this is the main heart of those most active. It is an exciting hobby because amateur astronomers can and do actually make scientific discoveries and contribute to the field of It is. Advanced amateur astronomy books are now within the reach of anyone, and these are the ideal books to get you started.

To get really into it, you probably will want to get a telescope either for yourself or perhaps for your children who are showing an interest in the wonders of the universe. It is a hobby and can be an introduction to several practical and useful technologies. It is alive and well in the West, as evidenced by the many special interest groups and clubs that meet regularly. It is a rapidly growing activity that appeals in many ways to all ages. It is a hobby that many people pursue who are interested. It is, yet not working in the field.

You are sure to meet numerous new friends who will share your passion and curiosity. It is rich with activities, lab exercises, and high-tech education. It is the study of the planets and other objects in the universe and their compositions, motions, and origins. It is different from most sciences in that we can't directly interact with the object of study. It is a science that seeks to explain everything that we observe in the Universe. It is the study of the Universe and its contents: planets, stars, black holes, galaxies, and quasars. It is one of the oldest sciences. It is the study of planets, stars, galaxies, and the universe as a whole, including how these originate and how they evolve in time. It is an observational, not an experimental skill. It is the most primeval of the sciences, having existed since the beginning of recorded civilization.

It is not a totally serious specialty. It is the last science to which many non-professional scientists can make factual and important contributions. It is a great example of how fascinating physics can be. Radio astronomy is also partly responsible for the idea that dark matter is an important factor of our universe. Indeed, It is both the nearby and the most outlying science from common experience. That is why it is both the oldest and the youngest science of them all. And yet radio astronomy itself is a young science, too. The study of our universe is not new, it is the oldest science. Though, you could say that it is the study of everything, because everything is a part of the Universe.

Hans Christian Andersen (1807-1875) wrote a fascinating tale about a swan that was born on a farmyard and thought it was a duck. The other ducks despised this ugly brown bird and chased it away. One day, however, Ugly Duckling saw some big white birds swimming in a pond. It expected them to drive it out, but they did not. Then the bird looked into the water and saw the reflection of itself: it was not a duckling after all but a beautiful white bird like the others, a swan.

Most of the time comets are like Ugly Duckling. The comet's nucleus is a small dirty rock usually 1-10 kilometers in diameter consisting of ice, gas and dust. In some comets, this nucleus is surrounded by a huge hydrogen cloud, which may be up to 3 million kilometers wide.

As the comet comes near the sun, a dramatic metamorphosis seems to take place: According to NASA's comet website, the sun's heat "vaporizes some of the icy nucleus or head and sunlight reflects from the vapor. Solar wind pushes the vapor in a direction away from the Sun to form the comet's tail. For this reason, comet tails generally point away from the Sun."

Comets can be roughly divided into two categories: long-term comets, which orbit the sun in more than 200 years, and short-term comets, with an orbital period of 200 years or less. Some of them are so spectacular that they were though to augur doom. For instance, in 1066 Halley's Comet preceded the Battle of Hastings, in which William the Conqueror defeated England's Saxon king Harold.

Many comets have elliptical paths that bring them very close to the sun. A comet loses much of its material each time it approaches the sun. It has been estimated that a comet will loose all its mass in under 100 000 years. This is a serious problem for the secular view of a 4.6 billion year old solar system. If the solar system were that old, we should not see any comets.

But this has not caused believers in million of years to discard their theory. They have set their hopes on a hypothetical stretch of space called the Oort Cloud. They believe that this spherical "cloud", which is supposed to extend up to three light years from the sun, houses millions of frozen comets that eventually find their way into an orbit that brings them closer to the sun to replace the ones that have been destroyed. The Oort Cloud is thought to provide long-term comets. The biggest problem with this explanation is there is no observational evidence for the existence of this cloud. Creationist astronomer Dr. Danny Faulkner suggests that the whole idea of the Oort Cloud "is not bad science, but non-science masquerading as science. The existence of comets is good evidence that the solar system is only a few thousand years old." .

The Kuiper Belt has been proposed as a potential reservoir for short-term comets. It extends from Neptune's orbit (ca 30 astronomical units or AUs ) to about 50 AU from the sun. However, most of the objects in this area which lies beyond Neptune's orbit, are tens of times bigger than comets. These so-called Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) include the recently discovered Eris (2003UB313) and Sedna (90377), which might be classified as dwarf planets. However, when compared to comets, they are giants. In order to replenish the comet supply, there should be millions of them but only 1026 TNOs have been found.

There is not enough material in either the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt to supply the solar system with the number of comets that old earth supporters desperately need. Genesis 1:14-19 records that the heavenly bodies we see in the night sky were created on Day Four. The genealogies of the Bible indicate that this occurred about 6000 years ago.

The Ugly Ducklings of the solar system are not portents of doom. The message they bring is altogether different. Together with other celestial objects they "declare the glory of God" (Ps. 19: 1). The are amazing evidence for a young solar system.

The first time human beings watched the sky was before 1600. There was no artificial equipment for sky watching, just eyes. A telescope was invented in the beginning of 1600. Galileo Galilei used a telescope since 1609. Later in the end of 1600 Isaac Newton developed a mirror telescope. In the end of 1800 photographing equipment were connected with telescopes, which started a new era in astronomy. Various technological innovations were born in the beginning of 1900, but the real growth of astronomy started in the end of 1960 because of computer aided systems.

Our planet's atmosphere causes headache for astronomers because it filters out most of the radiation from the space. The problem is that only a fraction of the electromagnetic radiation gets through the atmosphere. Only visible light (vawelength 300-800 nm) and radiovawes (1 mm - 15 m) can be detected down on Earth. Additional problems are caused by refraction and scintillation. These phenomena can be seen when using a telescope. A star looks like a "disk". Those atmospheric phenomena force us to select carefully the locations for telescopes. The best places for observatories on our planet are in Chile, Hawaii and the Canary Islands.

There are two types of optical telescopes, namely refractors (dioptrics) and reflectors (catoptrics). Refractors use lenses whereas reflectors use mirrors. The basic idea of an optical telescope is to gather and focus light mainly from the visible part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Refractors behave much as camera objectives, whereas reflectors create the image in the focal point of the telescope. There are various combinations and configurations of the telescopes, such as Newton and Cassegrain telescopes.

The first astronomical images were taken somewhere in late 1800. Nowadays CCD- (Charged-Coupled Device) cameras provide many times better images than those regular cameras.

Here are few big telescopes around the world:
- Mauna Kea
- Gemini
- Harlan J. Smith

Let's talk about the two types of telescopes, namely refractors and reflectors. According to Wikipedia, a telescope is "an instrument designed for the observation of remote objects and the collection of electromagnetic radiation". In fact this means that the purpose of telescopes is to gather light. The bigger the surface area of the lens of the telescope, the more photons the telescope gathers. The reason for building massive telescopes is to gather more and more photons, which means to be able to see further.

The name "telescope" was invented by Galileo Galilei in 1611. In Greek "tele" = far, "scopein" = to look or see, "teleskopos" = far-seeing [Wikipedia]. The name "telescopes" actually covers more devices than just optical reflectors and refractors. Optical telescopes, radio telescopes, and X-ray and gamma-ray telescopes all belong under the name "telescopes". I concentrate in this article to optical telescopes, and especially to reflectors and refractors.

A rafracting telescope uses a lens to gather photons and it works pretty much like a lens camera. Refraractors were the first telescopes invented. The first real refractors did exist in the beginning of 1600 in the Netherlands. A reflecting telescope uses mirrors to gather light and form an image. The first practical reflecting telescopes were built in late 1600 by Isaac Newton. Refractors are mainly used by amateurs, while reflectors are popular in professional astronomy.

Newton type reflector was invented by Isaac Newton. It includes a small mirror inside the telescope to redirect the light to either side of the instrument. By this arrangement a user can observe the image from the side of the telescope. The picture above is an example of a Newtonian telescope. A Cassegrain type reflector includes a small mirror inside to redirect the light back towards the main mirror. The light goes through a small hole in the middle of the main mirror and hits a detection system in the end of the telescope. The detection system is usually a CCD- (Charged-Coupled Device) camera which is able to collect almost each incoming photon. Scientists use CCD-cameras to study the brightness and spectrum of objects.

Optical telescopes are used to create a picture of the objects in the space, but the problem with them is that they cannot "see" far. In order to see very far, such as billions of light years away from the Earth, we need other types of tools. Radiotelescopes provide us a possibility to see very far from our planet. Radioastronomy was born in 1930's when American Karl Jansky suddenly captured radio signals from space. He realized that the signal comes from the same direction every day, but the astronomers did not put much attention to this phenomenon.

Although astronomers did not get interested, there was one man who got, Grote Reber. He built his own radiotelescope and found dozens of sources of radio signals in space. Bigger and higher performing telescopes were built in 1960's.

The first big and fully rotating radiotelescope was built in Jodrell Bank in England. The telescope was ready 1957 and its diameter is 76 meters. This telescope is still in use, after 50 years of operation. The next big telescope was built by NRAO (National Radio Astronomy Observatory in US) in the end of 1950's. It was a bit bigger than the one in Jodrell Bank but it suddenly collapsed. NRAO built a new and even bigger telescope, Green Bank, which has a size of 100×110 meters. The biggest radiotelescope on Earth is Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico and its diameter is 300 meters. Other locations of radiotelescopes are La Silla in Chile, Mauna Kea in Hawaii, and Nobeyama in Japan.

Individual radiotelescopes are not able to "see" enough and therefore new solutions are needed. Radiotelescope arrays were invented around 1970's to address this problem. An array is a group of individual radiotelescopes connected with each other. Together they can provide even better results. The first big array was built in Cambridge and it is five kilometers long. The biggest array today is VLA (Very Large Array) which was built in New Mexico in the end of 1970's. It consists of 27 telescopes that can be moved on rails. Diameter of this telescope array is 40 kilometers and the individual telescopes are connected to each others by cables.

VLA is big but it is possible to build even bigger one by connecting telescopes by radio channels. VLBA (Very Large Baseline Array) has a diameter of 8000 kilometers and it is located on North American soil. Again, VLBA is big. Actually it is huge, but there are plans to build even bigger array. By positioning telescopes on Earth and in space we can get thousands times sharper images than today's optical instruments can provide.

Hold on! There is even bigger array. After publishing this article, Stuart as one of my readers, pointed out the following:

Actually, the largest radio telescope array in use today is called global VLBI and involves connecting the VLBA and the European VLBI network (EVN) with telescopes in Australia and several other countries. This gives a telescope the diameter of the planet Earth. At one point it also included the Japanese satellite Halca making a radio telescope effectively three times the diameter of the Earth.

As you can guess, the future is for radioastronomy.

Moon is the brightest object in the night sky and it orbits the Earth. It is our only natural satellite. The Moon is approximately a quarter of the size of the Earth and it consists of rock. The diameter of the Moon is 3474 kilometers. As we all know, there is no life outside our planet, at least we have not found (yet). The same applies with Moon, there is no life on it. Even though the Moon is the brightest object on night sky, the light is not created in the Moon but it is sunlight reflected from the surface of the Moon.

The shape of the Moon varies due to the shadow of the Earth. A full circle of various phases of the Moon takes 29,5 days. The Moon is the only astronomical object on which human beings have landed. It is bombarded by meteorites, because of which the ground is full of impact craters. The largest crater on Moon, which has also said to be the largest crater in our solar system, is the South-Pole Aitking Basin.

Observing the Moon

Moon is easy to locate and it can be seen without any equipment. In order to see more, one should start with binoculars, which helps to see better the craters of the Moon. With a good telescope one can see the craters very closely. If you watch the moon close to Equator, you can see it also on daytime on a clear sky.

If you are planning to observe the Moon with a telescope, you should first find a map of the Moon in order to locate craters. Interesting craters to watch are Archimedes, Kopernikus, Klavius and Theophilus. Find those in your map and then try to locate them on the Moon. The Moon contains also a number of seas that are also interesting targets to observe. One very interesting phenomenon to observe is the Lunar Eclipse which happens quite often.

Moon is an interesting object to watch and for many new amateurs it is probably the first target to watch. If you are an amateur just starting skywatching, I recommend you to start with the Moon.

Stars, right? What else? Almost all those tiny spots you see on night sky are stars. How many stars can be seen without any equipment? Millions? No, around 1000-1500 in cities and around 3000 in countryside. There are so many stars above that a human being cannot just handle them all. Therefore the stars are grouped into constellations, groups of stars. Those constellations are usually related to some mythology, such as Greek and Babylonian mythology. Grouping stars into constellations helps human beings to manage that big amount of information.

Some stars form clusters, such as Pleiades. Many stars are binary stars which is a stellar system consisting of two stars orbiting around their center of mass. For each star, the other is its companion star. Some of the stars are variable stars which have alternating brightness. The alternating cycle can take days or even years, but it can be very fast as well, e.g. hours. Some stars are kefeids, whose brightness changes in a predictable amount of time.

Every single star you see up there belongs to the Milky Way galaxy which is a huge group of stars. The Milky way includes billions of stars and the "belt of stars" of the milky way can also be seen on night sky. The Milky Way is surrounded by ball-shaped star clusters. The space is not actually "empty" Instead there is matter between the stars that you cannot see. An example of such matter is the M42 Nebula in Orion constellation. New stars are born in this kind of nebulae.

Galaxies, such as M31 Andromeda galaxy, are huge groups of stars. Even though galaxies are huge groups of stars, they are not the biggest element. Groups of galaxies are much bigger. In addition to these star-based formations, there are planets, meteors, comets and the moon. The satellites orbiting the Earth should not be forgotten.

So, there are lots of stars up there in different formations. You don't watch only stars up there, instead various elements including lots of stars.

"After processing, the images are transmitted through a communications satellite to NASA Ames where the imagery is placed on an Ames Web site. Then the imagery is combined with Google Earth maps," said Vince Ambrosia of NASA Ames, the project's principal investigator.

With California's Santiago fire burning over 426,000 acres, and displacing over 500,000 people from their homes, NASA has stepped in with their IKHANA UAV aircraft and the Google Earth Maps to assist. Working with firefighters who are suffering from sheer exhaustion due to being on their feet for over three days of heavy firefighting, NASA today has joined ranks in order to remotely fly their Ikhana over seven of the twelve wildfires in California with the highest of technology available to mankind.

NASA's Ikhana is carrying a sensor package of instruments that have been specially developed by the space agency to see through smoke, while transmitting infra-red images and temperate data down to the firemen on the ground, in order to help them better strategically fight the fires. With a 10-hour flight plan developed to fight the California fires, it flew out of NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

The Ikhana is one of the U.S. Air Force planes operating in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the Ikhana airplane specially designed for NASA as a long-endurance plane that specializes in high-altitude flights. An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) which is flown remotely by pilots at NASA's Dryden, the Ikhana is a General Atomics Aeronautial Systems Predator B. It specialized in working with special sensors to process the fire images on board the plane, before sending them down to the firefighters. With the Autonomous Modular Sensor-Wildfire developed for the Ikhana, it allows the remotely flown predator to look around while carrying the fire sensor package. Approximately a month ago, NASA at Dryden had done a Ikhana demonstration flight series as part of the Western States Fire Mission in order to show their improved wildfire imaging and mapping capabilities, according to Yahoo news.