Astronomy is study of celestial objects

Astronomy is one of the oldest natural science. It is dealing with the study of celestial objects such as Galaxies, Nebulae, Stars, Planets, Comets and Asteroids. Also, phenomena such as Supernova or explosions of gamma rays and cosmic microwave background radiation. That includes physics, chemistry and evolution of such objects that are outside the Earth’s atmosphere. It is associated with physical cosmology that studies the Universe as a whole. Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that seeks to determine the nature of the celestial bodies.

In the twentieth century it was split into observational and theoretical. Observational is focused on collecting data from observations of astronomical objects. Then are analyzed using basic principles of physics. There is a theoretical astronomy. It is oriented towards the development of computer and analytical models to describe astronomical events and objects. Both fields are complementary. Theoretical seeks to explain the observational results and observation are used to verify the theoretical results.

That is one of the few science where amateurs play an active role, especially in the discovery and observation of phenomena due to the fact contributed to many important astronomical discoveries.

Astronomy in history

In the early recorded history, Greeks, Egyptians, Indians, Babylonians, Iranian, Chinese and Mayans were involved in observing the night sky, but until the invention of the telescope managed to develop into a modern science. Historically, that is a discipline in which were included astrometry, celestial navigation, observational astronomy and calendar making, but professional astronomy is now considered synonymous with astrophysics.