Astronomy, for those who don't know it, is more than merely looking at the stars, though this is the beginning of the matter. Astronomy led the world to begin to dream in ways that left the abstract cosmology of earthly religion to more enlightened studies, such as geometry, trigonometry, and mathematics itself. It was an astronomer who first defined the properties and importance of prime numbers, for instance.
The pursuit of the stars has led to speculation about what is actually out in the deep, cold, black of the universe, thus making names like Jules Verne, Carl Sagan (actually an astrophysicist, by trade), Gene Roddenberry and Steven Spieldberg household names. Their stories have ignited imaginations and curiosity throughout the planet, leading to even greater ventures. For instance, Roddenberry's fictional series Star Trek gave way to the name of a shuttle being named The Enterprise (along with the popular show's theme song being played by a brass band at the inauguration of the shuttle).
Just what is seen in the night sky has affected our minds and hands, leading to not only fiction, but categorical pursuit of little green men, the vehicles that they zoom about in, and the places that they visit. Today astronomy is not merely a chubby Italian man making sketches of the moon as he peers through a tube that today practically looks like a toy.
Astronomy today entices debate, expense, careers and reputations, and money -heaps of it. NASA, for instance, recently decided it best to make the most of their funding by prioritizing their projects, working on each project systematically, vice haphazardly, that 'the cart not be put before the cart.'
Further, many nations and space agencies are now gearing up for a bit of a space race -or races, plural. There are races to the moon, to finish the space station (and build others), to have the first hotel in space, the first hotel on the moon, and eventually Mars, and even to send a probe to an asteroid cluster and have it actually return - a proposition nearly fulfilled by Japan with her Minerva probe, which sadly, didn't make it back to mother Earth.
The nation of England has recently announced that it will lend pecuniary support to the European Space Agency over the next decade and beyond. This in the wake of the launching of the ESA's Soyuz rocket carrying the Venus Express launched on 10 November '05 to explore our nearest neighbor and to study such interests as global warming (this launch being all the more historic as it took place from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, where both the Sputnik satellite and Yuri Gagarin, the world's first true astronaut also departed the Earth).
So, things are truly heating up in astronomy. The pursuit of studying the stars has taken on a more tangible expression -literally, as we are now retrieving more and more matter from moons, planets and even space dust, all of which are of great importance to truly understanding the makeup of 'those little dots of light in the sky.' Astronomy is no longer a single lone figure (and there have been thousands of them) sitting, studying the night skies. It has become an adventure truly epic. Were the giants of astronomy with us today, they would surely be proud.
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