Basic Astronomy

Introduction
Before we begin the wonderful, interesting and highly controversial topic of Astronomy, we must first define the word itself. According to "Dictionary.com" Astronomy means; "The science that deals with the material universe beyond the earth's atmosphere" and according to "Google Dictionary" astronomy means; "The branch of science that deals with the celestial objects, space, and the physical universe as a whole". Astronomy can also be interpreted on a more personal level. According to some astronomy means hobby and to many, it even means career. Humans, for thousands of years have observed and pondered the heavens, they have formulated and concieved ideas on what the stars were and how they were created. For example the ancient Greeks believed that the white-ish pale-ish band they saw stretching across the sky, was a stream of milk from the breast of Hera, the queen of the gods. We now that this is not milk, but in fact one of the arms of our own Milky Way galaxy (funnily enough our galaxy was named after this belief shared by the greeks).

Course Description
Throughout this course we will try to touch all areas possible in the large subject of astronomy. We will also debate (on our blog) some of the fundamental philosophical questions, the study raises, such as, "are their aliens, and what would they be like", or, "is their a multiverse", and finally we could raise the question of "why are we here and what purpose do we serve", this last question may be the hardest and easiest question to answer, depending on how one might look at it and how one might interpret it on a more personal level, but, whatever, enough of this droning about the questions we will discuss later, lets get started on the basics.

A history of Astronomy
Astronomy is one of the oldest, probably the oldest natural science dating back to when the first human ever observed and pondered the heavens, 200,000 years ago.