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One of the oldest true sciences known to humankind, astronomy is a natural scientific field dealing with the study of all celestial objects and phenomena that lie outside of the Earth’s atmosphere; this includes planets, comets, meteors, stars, nebulae, moons and radiation of all kinds.

From cosmology, the study of the origins and large-scale shape and structure of the universe, to astrobiology, the study of potential life in other areas of the universe, astronomy is primarily concerned with the evolution, chemistry, motion and physics of celestial objects.

So what does that mean for the average person, exactly? While the detailed mathematical motions of stars, planets, moons, and other objects may not be of particular interest to the public at large, our use of incredible imaging instruments, such as the famed Hubble Telescope, has made the study of astronomy a more personal one, allowing us to get a glimpse of our galactic neighborhood, and even revealing objects that existed mere hundreds of thousands of years after the big bang, aiding in our attempt to answer the question of where we – and everything else – come from.

Besides getting us all excited enough to allow a small portion of our tax dollars to fund agencies like NASA, these advanced astronomical observation methods have given us all a taste of the sheer size of space and the matter it holds, bringing a previously unseen level of humility to most of us, even while amazing us with its beauty and wonder.

If you have an interest in the heavens at large, astronomy is your subject – click here to check out more from our astronomy section!