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bro, what exactly is astronomy?
we all know astrology or at least heard of some crazy woman going "it's only because he's a scorpio" to excuse her son's every mistake. that is not astronomy. astronomy, my fellow humans, in simple words, is the study of everything in the sky. you'd be quick to assume the whimsy and art in the sky but worry not because an astronomer is always there to explain with numbers and fancy words.
astronomy means the studying of the things up in the sky from the stars to the plants to the aestroids to everything roaming around in this vast abyss. even if you might not know it or realize it, but everything up there was important for us back then and even now. the stars up in the sky not only made our ancestor's lives more whimsical but also made it easier. when we started to plant crops, the stars up there acted as guides as to when to plant the crops and when to harvest. stars and planets are mentioned in every historical empire, every wall, every text. it was, is and will always be a part of our live, we are made of stardust after all.
but what's so cool about it to the point that you yap about it all the time?
first of all, i do not yap about it. it is just expressing my love for it. why is astronomy cool? well then, you'd have to ask why is it not cool? more than most of art pieces take inspiration from this specific nature's masterpiece. it slowly makes you realize how insignificant you are and in a good way. because it gives you the reassurance that every mistake you ever made is nothing in comparision to this vast universe. it answers our long asked questions of our purpose and our goal. it pushes the limits of the human minds, yes that includes your big brain, ronald. it distorts reality and time, that means somewhere out there, you are still young and curious about this world, unlike now.
it forces us to pursuit questions and problems we'd never answer in our day-to-day life unless we're having a existential crisis. it allows us to think for ourselves, to have a hand in solving the mystery of life, is there really nothing more to life than survival? but in shorts words to not fry our little brains on a random tuesday night, it is a big and vast world full of fascinating objects. even if it is technically all useless, no knowledge is truly wasted. knowing whether or not the star two million light years away is dead or not is not going to help us out but, it's better knowing than not, right?
wait, we're made of stardust?
yeah, we're made of stardust. that's why astronomy is interesting, you get to find out cool things like this. to begin this, you'd have to know the big bang theory. this website wasn't made to mock the less experienced so i'll be explaining everything from scratch here. the big bang theory is a phyiscal theory about the origin of the universe. it states that the universe expanded from a singular highly dense and hot point and is still expanding till this day. in the first three to twenty minutes of it happening, big bang nucleosynthesis took place. it is the production of light atomic nuclei like helium, hydrogen and lithium. the universe's first generation stars were formed from these gases and began to combust, a process called nucleosynthesisnucleosynthesis is the process of creating new elments from pre-existing nucleons. it began from the big bang nucleosynthesis which produced hydrogen, helium and trace amounts of lithium. then led to stellar nucleosynthesis which occurrs inside stars creating elements as heavy as upto iron. taking place is in simple words, creating new atomic nuclei from pre-existing nucleons.
the first generation stars burned their fuel quickly and were only able to make a few elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. when these stars went supernova, they expelled the elements produced and planted the seeds for the next generation of stars. the next generation of stars were able to create heavier elements such as carbon, magnesium and nearly every element on the periodic table. this made way for all the other beings of the universe to be created. so, the only reason you have iron in your blood and calcium in your bones is because a star died for it, essentially making you made of stardust. see, space isn't so hard to understand, right?