What I think Astronomers do...

This is an easy one.... astronomers are machines that convert coffee into discoveries of exoplanets, stars, galaxies and very interesting articles to read in between classes. Seriously, that's the first thing that pops into my mind when I hear the word "astronomer". But when I think further into the subject, I also see them in a labcoat. :) These people must be used to darkness. Their hours of operation make college all-nighters seem like a walk in the to them. But when I was young I thought about becoming an astronomer when I first held my first telescope (it was my brother's actually). The telescope didn't work... so there went the aspiration. So I satisfied my curiosity as to what astronomers do by simply gazing up at the sky in places where there is no light pollution. Here and there, throughout my life I did this and until college I just concluded that this is what they do: they look up at the sky just like we do, except they're paid to do so and have an interest of our universe as it was during its earliest times. Not only that but they study the formation of planets, stars, galaxies and perhaps how our sun affects our planet in a more comprehensive level. Since I'm barely taking a course in Astronomy, I expect to have a much broader perspective at the end of quarter.

So I searched online and read a bit of what they do. Among the webpages an interesting interdisciplinary video that will be mentioned next time. Their work throughout time has immensely benefited us. For example, understanding the placement of constellations was a foundation for developing navigation in ancient times.  Nowadays, organizations like NASA make it very easy to see how astronomy affects us by showing spinoff technologies that made its way to our everyday lives. In fact here's the link: http://spinoff.nasa.gov/ .

Check it out:
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=156166291