ASTRONOMY ----- AN OVERVIEW

Prof. K. Shankara Sastry.

Dept. of Astronomy (Retd),
Osmania University
Introduction
Astronomy is the oldest science. Vedic astronomy has a long span starting
from antiquity. Astronomical topics are mentioned in vedic literature. An
ancient report on conjunction of Jupiter with the star cancri is found in
Taittireeya samhita and other texts. There are ancient observations of moon
recorded in Rigveda. Such records are available in oral traditional literature
of vedic times. There was no systematictext compiled prior to 1400 BC
Probably Vedanga Jyotisha compiled by Lagadha in 1200BC is one of the
earliest texts. Astronomy texts called Siddhantas essentially deal with
Planetary motions, their periods of motion, relative sizes of the Earth, the Sun
and the Moon and computation of eclipses of the Sun and the Moon. Thus the
planetary astronomy had flourished in India starting from Aryabhata I in the
5thcentury AD to Bhaskara II in the 12thcentury AD. Aryabhata composed an
astronomical text in476AD containing tables of astronomical constants, sine
tables and computation of longitudes of planets. He explained the daily
motion of the Earth, duration of day and night and the length of the year.
Aryabhata proposed Surya Siddhanta according to which the Sun is at the
centre of the cosmos. According to vedic literature, Surya Siddhanta
was first revealed by Sun god himself to Mayurasura. Astronomy has been
fascinating to the people all over the world since a long time. The Greek
astronomer Ptolemy (about 150 AD) compiled a series of 13 volumes in
astronomy known as Almagest. According to Ptolemy, the Earth is
supposed to be at the centre of the Universe and the Sun, Moon and the then
known planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn moved around
the Earth in circles. This theory called Geo centric theory predominantly
prevailed from 1 to 15 century. Arabs extended the work of Ptolemy. They
brought Hindu system of numbers to Europe. In the year 1543 Copernicus a
great astronomer who laid the foundation for the modern planetary astronomy
suggested that Sun is at the centre of the cosmos and planets including the
Earth moved around the Sun. This Helio centric theory, originally proposed
by Aryabhata was gradually accepted by mid 17 century. After Copernicus,
the great observational astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546 1601 AD) made
accurate observations of planetary positions and his assistant Johannes
st

th

th

Kepler (1571 1630 AD) studied these observations and formulated the
three famous laws of planetary motion. According to these laws, the
planets revolve around the Sun in elliptical orbits with the Sun at one focus;
the line joining the Sun sweeps equal areas in equal intervals of time; and the
period of revolution of a planet is directly related to Planets mean distance
from the Sun. Later Sir Issac Newton (1642 1727 AD) studied the laws of
Kepler and discovered the celebrated law of Universal Gravitation. Much
earlier to Newton, the Earths gravity was supposed to be predicted by
Bhaskaracharya of 12th century. Newtons law of gravitation along with his
2nd law of motion (mass X acceleration = Force) forms the basis for Celestial
Mechanics. The discovery of the planet Neptune is an example for the
application of Newtons law of gravitation to Celestial Mechanics. The
planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known from antiquity.
Herschel discovered Uranus in 18 century with a telescope. Motion of
Uranus could not be explained by taking into account the attraction
of all planets known at that time. From perturbation theory of celestial
mechanics the mathematicians Laverrier in France and Adams in England
independently calculated the position of a new Planet at certain time. They
asked the observer Galle in Germany to direct his telescope to th
e predicted position. Galle accordingly found the new Planet
Neptune at the predicted position. Th
is discovery was made in the 19
th

th

century.
Relationship with other
branches of Science
Astronmy is not only oldest science but it is
also closely related to other branches of
Science : physics, mathematics, biology and chemistry. Astrophysics dealing
with the
application of the laws of physics to unde
rstand the nature of the planets, stars and
galaxies and the universe as a whole is an in
separable part of astr
onomy. The principles
of optics and electronics of physics are the
basis for astronomical te

lescopes. Photometric
and Spectroscopic techniques of physics are the
basis for the study of structure of stars
and galaxies. Principles of statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics are
extensively
used in theoretical astronomical studies.
As already stated, celestial mechanics which deals with the problems of
planetary motion
is based on fundamental laws of physics
namely Newtons law of gravitation and the 2
nd

law of motion. Celestial Mech

anics is intimately
related to space flights. Astronomer
Mathematicians Gauss, Laplace
and others developed numeri
cal methods to solve some
complicated equations in celestial mechanics.
Thermo nuclear reactions we
re discovered from the study of
Stellar structures, as the
stars generate the energy chiefly by conver
sion of hydrogen to helium through protonproton and carbon-nitrogen cycles. Recently
a number of molecules and radicals are
discovered in the atmospheres of stars, planets, comets and in the interstellar
space. The
element Helium was first found in the Solar
spectrum obtained from the observations of
the total Solar eclipse of August 18,1868 from
the Tobacco fields of Guntur in Andhra
pradesh. More recently, Fluorine which is used
in our daily tooth paste is found to be
produced during certain stages of evolution in
some stars. These findings reveal the link
between chemistry and astronomy. Recently tr
aces of extra terrestrial life and some

organic molecules have been discovered on Mars and elsewhere in outer

space. This
interesting result has prompted even biol
ogists to work with the astronomers to
understand the origin of life. Engineering skills
are used in space flights. Thus astronomy
is a common ground for scientists from all bran
ches of basic and applied sciences to
collaborate.
Scope Of Astronomy
We study astronomy to understand the universe as
a whole, in all respects. The universe
is very vast and contains enor
mous quantity of matter. It can
be divided into several parts
for the purpose of description.
1) The solar system comprising the Sun the Planets and their satellites,
asteroids,
comets and interplanetary medium.
2) Further out are stars that occur as single, in pairs and multiples.
3) The stars also form groups and clusters and bigger systems called galaxies
like
our home galaxy, the Milky Way galaxy.
4) The inter stellar space i.e. the space
between the stars containing dust and clouds
and gas and nebulae
5) Large scale structures such as clusters
of galaxies and super clusters of galaxies.
In order to describe the universe, one requires large numbers in terms of
physical
parameters such as length, mass and time. The average distance between the
Sun and the
Earth is 150 million kilometres
and light takes about 8
1/3

minutes to travel this distance.

The distance between the Sun and Pluto in

the solar system is 5.5 light hours where a

light hour is the distance travelled by light in
one hour with the speed of light at 3 lakh
kilometres per second. The size of a typical
star like our Sun is 700,000 kilometres and
the mass is about 2 X 10
33

grams. Huge systems like galaxies contain enormous quantity

of mass.
Stars
On a clear night sky we can see about 6000 star
s of different colours ranging from blue to
red with the naked eye. We can see about 10000
stars with a binocular of focal length 3
to 4 inches. The different colors indicate diffe
rent physical conditions in the stars. Blue
stars are much hotter, more massive and much
younger while red ones are much cooler
and older and also less massive
. Our Sun is an yellow type star. The masses range from
0.1 solar mass to about 60 solar
masses and sizes range from 1/
10 to 20 times that of the
sun. The surface temperatures range from
3000 to 40,000 degrees kelvin. The bright stars
appear to form groups and suggest to us figu
res of some animals or mythological heroes.
These groups are called Constellations. Most
of the Constellations have their origin
among Chaldeans and Greek. There are now 88 constellations spread all over
the sky
Two thousand years ago Greeks recognised 48
constellations. 12 of th
e 88 constellations
lie on the path of the earth (or the apparent
path of the Sun) and the moon. These are
called Zodiac signs or Rashis. Each rashi is 16

degrees in width and 30 degrees in length.

In India nakshatras are being used from Vedic times. There are 27 nakshatras
which are
27 groups of stars lying on or near the path
s of Sun and Moon. In Chinese and Arabic
systems the counterparts of nakshatras are
called Lunar mansions (or Manzils), the house
of the Moon. Their number 27 corresponds to
the siderealperiod of the moon which is
27.32 days. Thus the moon occupies one mansion each day. As each
nakshatra is of
13degrees 22minutes the sun is in each naksha
tra for about 13 days since the sun moves
at about 1 degree per day. This is the basis for naming the day in India by
nakshatra in
which the moon is found at Sunrise. Some i
ndividual stars have prop
er names. Some of
the prominent stars among them are Sirius
(Vyaadha), Canopus (Agastya), Polestar
(Dhruva), Altair (Shravana)
, Aldeberan (Rohini) etc.
We shall now briefly look into the evolution of
a star. A star is a luminous ball of gas
held together by gravity. Stars are born
from clouds of gas and dust by gravitational
contraction. During contraction,
gravitational potential energy is
released and half of this
energy is utilised in heating the star and the rest is radiated away. Thus the
temperature of
the contracting cloud increases and when it
reaches about 10 million
degrees gravitational
contraction stops and nuclear reactions begin to
generate the energy. Thus a star is born
and begins to radiate. In this process 4 Hy

drogen atoms combine to form a Helium atom

by fusion and the energy is released. The nuclear fusion continues and more
and more
heavy elements are formed and the energy is generated until all the nuclear
fuel is
exhausted. The star undergoes several chan
ges and ends up as a super dense object
namely awhite dwarf, a neutron star or a bl
ackhole. The time required for a star to reach
the final stage varies from a few million years for a hot blue star to a few
billion years for
a cool red star. During the final stages of
evolution some stars undergo violent explosions
and throw away their material into interstellar space. Such stars are called
Novae or
Supernovae depending on the intensity of the ex
plosion. When such an explosion occurs,
the star becomes so bright that it can be seen even at day time. The first
known nova was
seen in 1054 AD as per the Chinese records. It
was so bright that it was seen for 3 weeks
during day time. However such
explosions are rare.
As already mentioned the stars end up their lives
as a super dense object, the less massive
stars become white dwarfs w
ith density of the order of 10
5

to 10
6

gm/cc. The mean

density of Earth is 5.5gm/cc. and the mean de
nsity of Sun is 1.4gm/cc. It means that a
white dwarf is so dense that a spoonfull of
its matter would weigh a ton on Earth.
Chandrasekhar, a renowned astr
ophysicist showed in 1935 that if the mass of the white
dwarf is >1.4 times the sola

rmass it would become unsta

ble and go on contracting
indefinitely. This is called Chandrasekhars Limit for the mass of a white
dwarf. Stars
with mass between 8 and 20 sola
r masses end up as neutron star
s while those greater than
about 20 solar masses produce black holes. The de
nsity in a typical neutron star is around
10
12

gm/cc. Their maximum mass is 2 to 3 solar masses and radius is 10

kilometers.
Black holes have a still higher density. A black hole of one solar mass would
have a
radius of about 3 kilometers
, which means that the entire mass of the sun is squeezed
into a sphere of radius of mere 3 kilometers. If the Earth is to become a black
hole it has
to shrink with all its mass (6 x 10
24

kg) to radius as small as 9 mm from the present

radius of 6000 kilometers. Chandrasekha
r was awarded Nobel prize in 1983 for his
outstanding work on white dwarfs and black hol
es. Some of these super dense stars pair
with a normal star to form a binary system. Such pairs emit radiation of very
high energy
in X-rays and ultrviolet regions. A binary
star with a neutron star produces pulsar
phenomena. In this, the neutron st
ar rotates very fast on its ax
is with periods of the order
of seconds to milli seconds.
The shortest period pulsar found so far has a period of 1.56 x 10
-3

seconds. These objects

also emit X-rays. A pair of normal star and black hole is a very powerful Xray source.
Isloted black holes cannot be observed. Ce
ntres of galaxies and binary stars are
favourable locations for detection of black holes.
GALAXIES
The universe is full of galaxies of different sizes and types. But the night sky
is filled
with stars belonging to a single galaxy, our home milky way galaxy.
Galaxies are
celestial objects having billions of stars as well as gas and dust held together
in space by
gravity. Our Sun and all the stars in the sky belong to milky way galaxy
which appears as
a cloudy band of light across the sky as trail of milk spilled in the sky. In
Indian literature
it is called as Akashganga. Milky way galaxy is
a highly disc shaped galaxy. It contains
about 600 billion stars like our Sun. It is so
huge that the light takes 100,000 years to
travel from one edge to the other.
During the 19
th

and early 20
th

century the solar system was believed to be at the centre of

our galaxy. This concept was found to be wron
g in 1920s and it is now establised that the
solar system is at a distance of about 27000
light years from the centre. The Sun along
with other members of the solar system m
oves around galactic centre once in about 250
million years. Since the age of the Sun is about 5 billion years it follows that
the Sun
might have made atleast 20 revolu
tions about the galactic centre.
There are about three billion galaxies like
our milky way in the observable universe.

Observable universe is the part of the univers

e accessible to our best telescope and this
distance is about 10,000 million light years. As
already mentioned galaxies appear in
different shapes and sizes. In 1926 Edwin H
ubble classified galaxies into three broad
groups depending on their strucutre namely
elliptical, spiral and irregular. Most
galaxies that fall into these categories are called Normal galaxies. These emit
mostly star
light. Our galaxy is a spiral galaxy.
Apart from the three major types, some specia
l types of galaxies having active galactic
nuclei have also been discovered. The centra
l region of these galaxies throws out hot
gases at large velocity of the order of 1000 km/sec. Some galaxies show the
evidence of
violent explosions and emit very large amount of
energy in radio, infrared, or X-ray wave
lengths. These are called active galaxies.
Some other galaxies exhibit morphological
features such as tails, bridges, shells,
warpsand rings. These features are caused by
gravitational encounters between galaxies.
Recently the X-ray satellite Chandra photog
raphed pairs of colliding galaxies in
disruption and merging processes. It is now believed that elliptical galaxies
are merger
products of spiral galaxies. Ga
laxies also occur in groups and clusters. Ours is a dominant
member of small collection
of galaxies called local group. Our nearest neighbour
Andromeda galxy situated at a distance of 2 million light years is another
dominant
member of this group. Besides these two gian
ts there about 30 other smaller galaxies in
this group. The local group occupies a vol

ume of space of about 4 million cubic light

years.
Clusters of galaxies usuall
y have a few hundred to a fe
w thousand members held by
gravity. Few clusters join together to form still bigger systems called super
cluster of
galaxies. One such super cluster of galaxies - Hercules at a distance of 720
million light