Section Pages: Introduction – Why Radio? – History – Light – Pixels
Disclaimer
The Radio Astronomy section of the ASRAS website is under constant construction. So please be patient with us as we learn how to design effective web pages in WordPress.
Thanks,
Martin Pepe
Introduction
The Guglielmo Marconi Foundation: Historical Museum
Today, the fields of Astronomy & Radio are tightly linked. From the time of Galileo (1609), people have peered into the heavens looking through glass. In 1897 Marconi sent his first ‘wireless (radio) telegram’ message.
Who would have thought that a mere 31 years later (1934) these two disciplines would stumble across each other, and, create the most powerful tool with which to understand our very existence and place in the universe.
Galileo Galilei – although NOT the inventor of the telescope – was the first to perfect it. Galileo discovered four of the many moons of Jupiter by using a telescope like this one (below). Its glass lenses were no better than that of the bottom of a common pop bottle.
Today, on a clear night, you can see the four Galilean moons {Io, Europa, Ganymede, Callisto} by using a pair of simple binoculars from Walmart.
