Astronomia Nova
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Telescopic astronomy is a new science. This year marks the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of the telescope to resolve the moons of Jupiter. However, any surface telescope has at best half of 24 hours in a day to use a telescope for the night skies, halving the time to about 200 years. If we take into account that the Moon obscures a great portion of the night sky for 2 weeks of every month then we can split that time frame again to roughly 100 years. Plus, weather is rarely optimal for viewing the whole sky radically cutting the amount of time again. The result is that despite the +/- 400 year history of the telescope we have only had a fraction of time that a telescope from the surface of the Earth can be used practically. Our eye on the Universe is only beginning to crack open.
Despite what we have scientifically cataloged, our understandings of what we are actually looking at are rather rudimentary in many respects. One of the more striking things about astronomy is the variation in the calculated distances to the majority of astronomical objects. Referencing various astronomy sources will give any number of calculated distances. The reason is the extreme newness of the art of astronomical comprehension. It takes several years of observations of any one object to begin to complete the calculations that give us our most basic distances. And then, everything that we might observe is generally in motion. This appreciation is empowering to would-be astronomers and humbling to the professionals. The night sky has been admired by the naked eye and observed for millenia yet much of our better understandings of astronomy and cosmology haven’t strayed far from their roots of philosophy and poetry.
Tags: 400th Anniversary of Galileo's use of telescope, Astronomia Nova, astronomy poetry philosophy, discrepency in astronomical distancing, Kevin McGruther, the new art of telescopic astronomy