Portal:Astronomy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The Astronomy Portal
edit  

Astronomy portal

A man sitting on a chair mounted to a moving platform, staring through a large telescope.

Astronomy (from Greek: ἀστρονομία) is a natural science that studies celestial objects and phenomena. It applies mathematics, physics, and chemistry, in an effort to explain the origin of those objects and phenomena and their evolution. Objects of interest include planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets; the phenomena include supernova explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. More generally, all phenomena that originate outside Earth's atmosphere are within the purview of astronomy. A related but distinct subject, physical cosmology, is concerned with the study of the Universe as a whole.

Astronomy is one of the oldest of the natural sciences. The early civilizations in recorded history, such as the Babylonians, Greeks, Indians, Egyptians, Nubians, Iranians, Chinese, Maya, and many ancient indigenous peoples of the Americas performed methodical observations of the night sky. Historically, astronomy has included disciplines as diverse as astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy and the making of calendars, but professional astronomy is now often considered to be synonymous with astrophysics.

Professional astronomy is split into observational and theoretical branches. Observational astronomy is focused on acquiring data from observations of astronomical objects, which 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. The two fields complement each other, with theoretical astronomy seeking to explain observational results and observations being used to confirm theoretical results.

Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs still play an active role, especially in the discovery and observation of transient phenomena. Amateur astronomers have made and contributed to many important astronomical discoveries, such as finding new comets.

Read more...
Show new selections
edit  

Selected article

This illustration compares the rapidly rotating Vega (left) to the smaller Sun (right).
Vega (α Lyr / α Lyrae / Alpha Lyrae) is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus. It is a relatively nearby star at only 25 light-years from Earth, and, together with Arcturus and Sirius, one of the most luminous stars in the Sun's neighborhood. It is 3.845 times hotter than the Sun.

Vega has been extensively studied by astronomers, leading it to be termed "arguably the next most important star in the sky after the Sun." Historically, Vega served as the northern pole star around 12,000 BCE and will do so again at 13,727 CE when the declination will be +86°14'. Vega was the first star other than the Sun, to have its photograph taken and the first to have its spectrum photographed. It was also one of the first stars to have its distance estimated through parallax measurements. Vega has served as the baseline for calibrating the photometric brightness scale, and was one of the stars used to define the mean values for the UBV photometric system. Sometimes Vega can't be seen.

In terms of years, Vega is only about a tenth the age of the Sun, but it is evolving so quickly that it has already approached the midpoint of its life expectancy, as has the Sun. It has an unusually low abundance of the elements with a higher atomic number than that of helium. Vega is also a suspected variable star that may vary slightly in magnitude in a periodic manner. It is rotating rapidly with a velocity of 274 km/s at the equator. This is causing the equator to bulge outward because of centrifugal effects, and, as a result, there is a variation of temperature across the star's photosphere that reaches a maximum at the poles. From Earth, Vega is being observed from the direction of one of these poles.

edit  

Did you know

Read more...
edit  

Categories

edit  

Projects

edit  

Space-related Portals

edit  

Selected picture

Cassiopeia A
Credit: Digitized Sky Survey, ESA/ESO/NASA FITS Liberator

Orion's Belt or The Belt of Orion is an asterism in the constellation Orion. It consists of the three bright stars: ζ Ori (Alnitak), ε Ori (Alnilam), and δ Ori (Mintaka).

edit  

June anniversaries

More anniversaries
edit  

Things you can do

edit  

Wikibooks

edit  

Astronomical events

All times UT unless otherwise specified.

2 June, 16:27 Moon at apogee
6 June, 02:00 Mercury at superior conjunction
7 June, 18:00 Arietids peak
13 June, 19:43 New moon
14 June, 23:46 Moon at perigee
21 June, 10:07 Earth at northern solstice
27 June, 13:00 Saturn at opposition
28 June, 04:53 Full moon
30 June, 02:30 Moon at apogee
edit  

Basics

 

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Wikibooks
Books

Commons
Media

Wikinews 
News

Wikiquote 
Quotations

Wikisource 
Texts

Wikiversity
Learning resources

Wiktionary 
Definitions

Wikidata 
Database

Purge server cache

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Portal:Astronomy&oldid=846040070"