Astronomers Today

I always had the romantic idea that astronomers still sat outside in the dark, sometimes in the comfort of their own home, and pointed their telescope up at the night time sky while meticulously taking note of any changes. However, I soon found out that this is still true to an extent, but now they use much larger telescopes located in the middle of nowhere, and instead of looking through the eyepiece of the telescope they sit in front of a computer screen collecting data. In short, the advances in technology has made it so astronomers can gather information more accurately, and more efficiently. Even though I would have liked to experience the romantic side of astronomy, now called amateur astronomy, I think that the new improvements have opened up a whole new world to scientists. More discoveries have been made now than ever before, and we now possess quantitative knowledge about the cosmos.

           Furthermore, astronomers today can now retell the the history of the universe with the help of telescopes both on land and on orbit something that was unimaginable during the time of great minds like Galileo, and Copernicus. With these instruments they have taken magnificent images of distant stars and galaxies whose light has taken millions of years to reach Earth. Thus, astronomers are in a way space explorers that work hard to unveil the secrets of the universe. These modern day adventurers pave the way to far away worlds, and celestial objects that reveal a little bit more about our beginning and what could be our demise.