review


Looking Back (and Forward)

One of the greatest things about astronomy is that when we look at very distant objects in the universe we are actually looking back in time.  Because it takes time for light (and other “signals”) to reach us over huge distances, we can literally see what things were like long ago.  Thus, the science of astronomy is largely about history.  The difference between astronomers and historians is that astronomers have to use a lot of tricky extrapolation and inference to learn about the past. I, on the other hand, can tell you about the recent past of Wa-chur-ed Observatory directly […]