What Is The History Of Astronomy?

Literally astronomy means the science of stars and space. It includes all systematic knowledge about the shies and heavenly bodies of the stars and space. It is one of the oldest sciences.

It deals with the celestial bodies, their positions, magnitudes, motions, distance, and constitutions, physical conditions, their mutual relations, their history and their destiny. In general it studies the earth in relation to other celestial bodies.

History of astronomy was known in china and India as for back as 2300 B.C. and at a much earlier period in Egypt and Babylonia. Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo started the studies of astronomy on a scientific basis. Later on Newton (18th century) purged astronomy of many erroneous conceptions and placed it upon a more scientific and experimental basis.

The invention of telescope in the 18th century gave great impetus to the study of heavens. Thus observational work acquired great importance from then onwards.

Here are some divisions of astronomy by the science and scientists; modern astronomy is divided into three divisions or sections.

A- Observational or telescopic astronomy
B- Astrophysics dealing with spectrum analysis of stars, internal constitution of the stars etc.
C- Photographic astronomy, photographing the heavenly bodies with the help of telephoto cameras.