radio astronomy
Sign in to savesubfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects at radio frequencies
AI overview
Radio astronomy is the study of stars, galaxies, and other objects in space by detecting the radio waves they emit rather than visible light. This allows astronomers to observe parts of the universe that are invisible to regular telescopes and to learn more about how these distant objects work.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
The Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, a radio interferometer in New Mexico, United States Radio astronomy is a subfield of astronomy that studies celestial objects using radio waves. It started in 1933, when Karl Jansky at Bell Telephone Laboratories reported radiation coming from the Milky Way. Subsequent observations have identified a number of different sources of radio emission. These include stars and galaxies, as well as entirely new classes of objects, such as radio galaxies, quasars, pulsars, and masers. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation, regarded as evidence for the Big Bang theory, was made through radio astronomy.
Radio astronomy is conducted using large radio antennas referred to as radio telescopes, that are either used alone, or with multiple linked telescopes utilizing the techniques of radio interferometry and aperture synthesis. The use of interferometry allows radio astronomy to achieve high angular resolution, as the resolving power of an interferometer is set by the distance between its components, rather than the size of its components.