For most of us, the idea of ​​astronomy is something we directly connect to stargazing, telescopes, and seeing magnificent spectacles in the sky. And truth be told, this is the exciting area of ​​astronomy that explains its enormous popularity. So, to the uninitiated, the idea of ​​“radio astronomy” seems strange. There are two reasons for this. The first is that humans are much more visually oriented than audio oriented. And the second is that radio astronomy does not really involve “listening” to the cosmos except to the extent that scientists using this sophisticated form of “stargazing” do not rely on visual study to conduct their work. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To appreciate what is truly exciting about radio astronomy, we must first change the way we see astronomy. This is because for professional astronomers the study of the universe is more about frequencies than the visual documentation of the phenomenon. This brings us back to Physics 101. Light, of course, is the physical phenomenon that enhances our ability to use our visual confirmation system, such as our eyes, to appreciate something, in this case the stars. So, when we look at the sky, we can see the light emitted by a star or reflected by a planet or moon. In many cases, if we see a distant star, we are actually seeing it hundreds or thousands of years ago because that is the time it takes for that light to travel through the universe and be visible in our sky. This in itself is a truly mind-blowing idea. Light itself is a rather strange substance. But for our astronomer scientists, light is just another energy that exists at a certain frequency. Now, we tend to think about frequencies when we talk about sound waves. In scientific terms light, energy and sound are just some forms of the same thing, frequencies of energy emulating from a source. Now we come to why radio astronomy is so necessary. The frequency range that light occupies in the large frequency spectrum is really quite small. To put it more bluntly, we can only “see” a small part of the universe that is actually there. Now, when you look at the night sky and it's so overwhelming, when you then realize that we're only seeing a small amount of what's actually happening up there, again, our minds can be quite overwhelmed. Radio astronomy uses sophisticated sensor equipment to study all the frequencies of energy that come to us from the cosmos. This way, these scientists can “see” everything that's happening out there and thus get a precise idea of ​​how stars look, behave now, and will behave in the future. Please note: this is just an example. Get a custom paper now from our expert writers. Get a Custom Essay For some of us who have heard of radio astronomy, we think of it in terms of “listening” for signs of life in the universe. And yes, SETI, or “the search for extraterrestrial intelligence” is a part of radio astronomy, albeit a small part. But of far more importance is the way in which radio astronomy has enabled serious astronomers (i.e. those who get paid to do so) to study stars many light years away, to study black holes that we could never see with our telescopes, and to collect research and data. about the entire universe that would otherwise be impossible to know and understand.