The fascination with the mysteries of the Universe has been part of human nature since the beginning of civilization. While admiring its extension and beauty, we feel the challenge of getting to know it and the desire to discover its connection with us. As we investigate the cosmos, we are also inquiring about our own origins.
It is quite possible that man had scanned the sky before the earth, seas and rivers, which were much closer.
The cycle of the seasons, the sun’s light and heat during the day, the moonlight and the stars at night, the need to orient yourself on your way from one place to another and to establish a chronology for the events were enough reasons for the man trying to equate the Universe.
At first, the known Universe was restricted to the Sun, the Moon and some planets. With the improvement of astronomical instruments, and the evolution of ideas itself, human knowledge has been expanding and the Cosmos revealing itself, in a surprising and impressive way.
The solar system is now being torn apart by space probes. Modern telescopes seem to give us superhuman vision. From the Sun, we left for the other stars that, by the billions, permeate our galaxy, the Milky Way. Even without being able to penetrate them, astronomy has been deciphering their interior, their formation and evolution, so linked to our own existence, as we are the fruit of the stars.
The gigantic interstellar clouds unveil with their curious shapes and fluorescent gases, and reveal themselves as the nurseries of stars. Going further, we notice that the Universe is organized into groups of stars, galaxies, and superclusters, interspersed with huge voids.
As far as instruments can satisfy our curiosity, we go forward in space and back in time, towards the limits of the Universe, which show us its childhood and adolescence.
References:
Wilson, Robert. Astronomy through the ages: the story of the human attempt to understand the universe. CRC Press, 2018.
Henry, Holly. Virginia Woolf and the Discourse of Science: The Aesthetics of Astronomy. Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Mills, Henry Robert. Practical astronomy: a user-friendly handbook for skywatchers. Elsevier, 2014.
Brothers, Dometa Wiegand. The Romantic Imagination and Astronomy: On All Sides Infinity. Springer, 2015.
