Quotes About Astronomy

Ptolomeo tenía razón después de todo: el universo gira en torno del centro de la Tierra. ¡Pero lo mismo puede decirse de cualquier otro punto del universo!

three years there are 1,092 days, and in five years 1,820 days, so that in eight years there are 2,912 days. (Author's note: At the end of five years a week may be added to bring the year back in line. Compare 1826.25 days of the solar year in five years to 1820 days of the Enochian calendar after five years. This leaves 6.25 days difference.

The development of the telescope, together with increased knowledge of things, brought men to see that the earth is not what man had once thought it to be.

the total number of galaxies in the universe seems to be in the region of ten billion, and that each of them has about a hundred billion stars the size of the sun.

The moon is out all day. I don't want to shock you.

To help enable the kind of science Hubble is performing makes my life worthwhile.

Even after years of observing, a new picture of Uranus from Keck Observatory can stop me in my tracks and make me say, 'Wow!'

When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live.

I think music is about our internal life. It's part of the way people touch each other. That's very precious to me. And astronomy is, in a sense, the very opposite thing. Instead of looking inwards, you are looking out, to things beyond our grasp.

The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.

The moon gravitates towards the earth and by the force of gravity is continually drawn off from a rectilinear motion and retained in its orbit.

Thanks to the fact that the Earth isn't a perfect sphere, and invoking a bunch of Newtonian physics, you can deduce that our planet wobbles, too, taking roughly 26,000 years to trace out a small circle on the sky, a phenomenon known as precession.

The development of the telescope, together with increased knowledge of things, brought men to see that the earth is not what man had once thought it to be.

The result was that, if it happened to clear off after a cloudy evening, I frequently arose from my bed at any hour of the night or morning and walked two miles to the observatory to make some observation included in the programme.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

the great world, so far as we know it from philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance, and are best corrected by a little astronomy.

O universo, até onde o conhecemos pela filosofia da natureza, não é bom nem mau, nem se ocupa em nos fazer felizes ou infelizes. Todas essas filosofias nascem da presunção humana e são bem corrigidas por um pouco de astronomia.

I refuse to accept Pluto's resignation as a planet.

This sight... is by far the noblest astronomy affords.

This is very similar to astronomy where different magnitudes are assigned to the brightness of an astronomical object, depending on the range of wavelengths being measured.

The President of the York society (whose name was Dr Foxcastle) turned to John Segundus and explained that the question was a wrong one. "It presupposes that magicians have some sort of duty to do magic – which is clearly nonsense. You would not, I imagine, suggest that it is the task of botanists to devise more flowers? Or that astronomers should labour to rearrange the stars? Magicians, Mr Segundus, study magic which was done long ago. Why should any one expect more?

All craft orbiting Tartarus had an orbit permanently locking them to the nightside.

By about age 12, I would prefer to stay up and watch the stars than go to sleep. I started learning. I started going to the library and reading. But it was initially just watching the stars from my bedroom that I really did. There was just nothing as interesting in my life as watching the stars every night.

Among the radio astronomers of SETI - the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence - it's only sort-of a joke that the true hallmark of intelligent life is the creation of radio astronomy.