The origin of astronomy

Astronomy originated from ancient human acquisition of seasons and divination activities. It is a subject that mainly observes and explains the material conditions and events of celestial bodies. It mainly studies the distribution, movement, position, state, structure, composition, nature, origin and evolution of celestial bodies. In ancient times, astronomy was also closely related to the formulation of calendars. The difference between astronomy and other natural sciences is that the experimental method of astronomy is observation, through which all kinds of information of celestial bodies are collected. Therefore, the study of observation methods and means is a direction that astronomers strive to study.

Ancient astronomers determined time, direction and calendar by observing the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies and phenomena. This is also the beginning of astrometry. If people observe celestial bodies and record astronomical phenomena, the history of astronomy will be at least five or six thousand years. Astronomy occupies a very important position in the early history of human civilization. The pyramids in Egypt and Stonehenge in Europe are famous prehistoric astronomical sites.

The research category of astronomy and the concept of astronomy have been developing continuously since ancient times. In ancient times, people could only observe celestial bodies with the naked eye. In the 2nd century AD, the geocentric theory put forward by Ptolemy, an ancient Greek astronomer, dominated the western understanding of the universe 1000 years. It was not until16th century that Copernicus, a Polish astronomer, put forward a new theory of cosmic system-Heliocentrism. 16 10, Italian astronomer Galileo made a refraction telescope independently, and for the first time he saw sunspots, the surface of the moon and the surfaces and profits and losses of some planets through the telescope. At the same time, Newton founded Newtonian mechanics, which produced a new branch of astronomy-celestial mechanics. With the birth of celestial mechanics, astronomy has entered a new stage from simply describing the geometric relationship and motion of celestial bodies to studying the interaction between celestial bodies and the causes of celestial motion, which is a great leap in the history of astronomy.

/kloc-The invention of astrophotography and spectroscopy in the mid-9th century enabled astronomers to further study the physical properties, chemical composition, motion state and evolution law of celestial bodies, thus further studying the nature of problems, thus resulting in a new branch of astrophysics. This is another leap in astronomy.

/kloc-radio telescopes began to be used in the 1950s. In the 1960' s, we made achievements called "four major discoveries in astronomy": microwave background radiation, pulsars, quasars and interstellar organic molecules. At the same time, humans have also broken through the shackles of the earth and can observe celestial bodies in the sky. Besides visible light, ultraviolet rays, infrared rays, radio waves, X rays and gamma rays of celestial bodies can also be observed. These have made great progress in space astronomy, and also had a great impact on the achievements of modern astronomy.