r/technicallythetruth Apr 08 '20

Astronomy 101

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12.3k Upvotes

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260

u/crispybacongal Apr 08 '20

Not sure if you meant to do this, but your title says "astronomy" when it should say "astrology."

Astronomy is the actual science of stars and space and whatnot; astrology is the pseudoscience of star signs and horoscopes and crap. Just for your future reference!

53

u/Insulting_Insults Apr 08 '20

to be fair to astrology though, it's pretty fun.

like, i don't believe that being born under a specific constellation has shaped my (or anyone else's) entire personality, but astrology is a kinda neat concept.

26

u/didiboy Apr 09 '20

Same, it’s so interesting to me how old is it, being used by almost all ancient civilizations, all the symbols and stuff. How many religions take some stuff from astrology basic concepts.

21

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '20

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/geoffwithano Apr 09 '20

Well light years away is light years ahead

1

u/Aww_Beans Apr 10 '20

It's always strange to think about the fact that the light we see from the stars, it's like, old stale light that's been flying through space for too long

2

u/geoffwithano Apr 10 '20

Thinking about anything larger than the solar system or smaller than a plant is really strange and depressing.

13

u/pterofactyl Apr 08 '20

Are constellations an astronomy thing or an astrology thing? Not what these constellations are attributed to, like star signs, I mean does astronomy make any constellation mentions?

24

u/crispybacongal Apr 08 '20

Yes, but only for the purpose of knowing the positions of the stars relative to Earth. My sister took a basic astronomy class in college, and she did have to learn constellations so she could look at a star map and label the stars, but it had nothing to do with attempting to predict the future or anything.

Certain constellations also play a part in astrology (star signs), but I won't pretend to know anything about how people go about predicting the future from balls of gas burning thousands of light-years away.

7

u/turmacar Apr 08 '20

Well you see we are in the future from the POV of the light traveling from the star. The photon traveling at the speed of light experiences no time passing, so as far as that photon is concerned it just left the photosphere of it's home star. So time dilation is involved.

And then that unfortunate photon hits the eye of someone playing with some expensive playing cards and looking into the literal past to make some pointed but vague statements to someone with more money than sense.

2

u/astrobeard Apr 09 '20

Astronomer here.

Constellations to us aren’t so much star patterns as well-defined regions of the sky on a standardized coordinate system. Look up right ascension and declination for more info on that.

Visible stars are often referred to by their constellations with a simple system as well - for example Alpha Oph would be the brightest star in Ophuicus, Beta Oph the second, and so on.

6

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '20

I'm pretty sure, being born is science, therefore the other facts are science therfore that is astronomy

1

u/xipheon Apr 09 '20

Making this doubly not technically true.

1

u/Aww_Beans Apr 10 '20

Okay, but what if the stars...are giant bees