Astronomy is the study of the universe, from our home on the earth we look out into the dim distances, and we strive to imagine the sort of world into which we are born. We are confined to the earth. Our knowledge of outer space is derived from light waves and other radiations which come flooding in from all directions. From time immemorial, men studied the heavens with their unaided eyes. Finally, the telescope was invented. It has the light gathering power of more than 200,000 human eyes.
We observe a volume of space so vast that it may be a fair sample of the universe itself.
The explorations fall into three phases.
The first phase led long ago to a picture of the solar system - the sun with its family of planets, including the earth, isolated and lonely in space...