Chapter Overview

Astronomers, like all scientists, rely heavily on observations to guide them in theorizing and in testing theories already developed. Unlike most scientists, however, astronomers cannot directly probe the objects they study. Rather, they must perform their observations from vast distances and can only passively collect radiation emitted by the bodies they seek to study. Collecting enough radiation to be useful in studying astronomical objects is difficult because most objects are so remote that their radiation is extremely faint by the time it reaches Earth. Moreover, special instruments must be used to extract the information desired from the radiation--instruments that can measure the brightness, the spectrum, and the position of objects to high precision. For example, to collect enough light to detect remote galaxies, astronomers use telescopes with mirrors the size of a small swimming pool. To avoid the blurring and blocking effects of our atmosphere, they use orbiting observatories. To analyze and display the observations, they use a computer. This chapter describes some of the more important devices and how they work. We will see that modern telescopes bear little resemblance to the long tubes depicted in cartoons. Moreover, modern astronomers rarely sit at the eyepiece of a telescope. They are more likely to be sitting at a computer terminal operating a telescope remotely, examining the data collected, or solving equations that describe, for example, the paths of stars when two galaxies collide.