2009 Year of Astronomy

In this space video learn how 2009 marks four centuries since Galileo first observed the night's sky with one of the earliest telescopes.

Veronica: Hi! I'm Veronica watchmojo.com. Today, we're at the Planetarium to invade the sky and all of its wonders. Louie Bernstein: In 2009 marks four centuries since Galileo first observed the night sky with one of the earliest telescopes. In 1609, they were already used for observing ships out at sea, but Galileo was the first person to point the telescope at the sky. He observed downturns on the moon, moons orbiting Jupiter, the faces of Venus and all of that convinced Galileo with that Copernicus was right. The sun is really at the center of the solar system and not the earth. Veronica: Now, you discovered the telescope as password to the stars. Is it just tells us some point today as it wasn't Galileo's time? Louie Bernstein: Nowadays, astronomy is really one of the most important leading sciences or building larger and larger observatories. Billions of astronomers were really trying to understand how the universe came into being, but along the way we're discovering other mastoids. For example, 80% of the universe consists of a brand new kind of -- with that we can't see. It's dark matter, the dark matter surrounds our galaxy and it really pass through us all the time. Veronica: Now Galileo's observations changed our understanding of the sky. Have there been any other turning points? Louie Bernstein: In the late 20s, early 30s Edwin Hubble discovered that other galaxies existed and that the universe is expanding. That pointed to a cosmic origin big bank, in other words the universe hasn't always existed and it won't always exist. It had a beginning and it'll have an end. Einstein with the special and general theories of relativity proved that matter and energy are the same thing and the time and space are relative, and now it depends on how quickly you are moving. Veronica: What do you hope to accomplish by the international year of astronomy? Louie Bernstein: What we want to do is get everybody to pause and look up and think about their place in the universe. We get caught up in our daily lives, we have our jobs and we are running to and for and what not and that's one reality, it's really a very, very small part of the real underlying reality that connects of and When you look up a star and sky, you can begin to sense that we're all part of the universe and we're part of something much, much larger.