Quotes About Astronomy

When, according to habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy. There had never before been any star in that place in the sky.

Neptune's unusual behavior is showing us that though we can make great models of planetary atmospheric circulation, there may be key pieces missing.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

The big discoveries raise questions that make astronomers work feverishly and argue with an agitation that verges on rudeness.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

We were looking almost one-tenth of the way to the edge of the universe. We're planning to use the facilities we have to make improvements by another factor of 10... a strain sensitivity that is 10 times smaller. This means looking 10 times further out into the universe.

Asteroids are our oldest and most numerous cosmic neighbors.

Together, NASA and Hubble are opening new vistas on the universe.

Some red star had come too close to the earth.

C'est folie, bien sûr, que de vouloir soumettre les événements, dans leur ordre aléatoire (et pareillement les humains, dans leur égoïsme naturel), aux règles de la logique ou du simple bon sens. Le monde ne tourne rond que pour les astronomes. Pour le commun des mortels, notre planète va au hasard, lamentable Nef des fous, subissant tour à tour la tempête ou la bonace, et ne trouvant aucun havre sur sa route.

As you know, this little grain of sand has mass. A very small mass, but mass nonetheless. And because this grain of sand has mass, it therefore exerts gravity. Again, too small to feel, but there. Now, Katherine said, if we take trilions of these sand grains and let them attract one another to form... say, the moon, then their combined gravtiy is enough to move entire ocreans and drag the tides back and forth across our planet.

many of the stars bearing names beside them: Vega, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Algebar, Deneb, Acrab, Kitalpha. "Their names are all derived from Arabic," Edmond said. "To this day, more than two-thirds of the stars in the sky have names from that language because they were discovered by astronomers in the Arab world.

Even as he watched, a star moved above the limb of the planet, laser weapons winked their ruby morse

He studied the stars, and guided his caravans across mountains and deserts by tracing his route in the sky.

Babylonian mathematics rested on a division of the circle into 360 degrees

Astronomy was the special science of the Babylonians, for which they were famous throughout the ancient world.

They divided the year into twelve lunar months, six having thirty days, six twenty-nine; and as this made but 354 days in all, they added a thirteenth month occasionally to harmonize the calendar with the seasons

To hell with you and your poetry — You will rot and be blown through the next solar system with the rest of the gases —

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars.

The largest volcano in the solar system, Olympus Mons on Mars, is about 300,000 square kilometers in area and about 22 kilometers (14 miles) tall.

It was a patient business, talking comets down to the speed of life.

My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Naming Planets.

Every five minutes, a pair of black holes merges somewhere in the universe, pouring gravitational waves out into space.

We are, quite literally, star dust.