Informative Essay: Radio Astronomy

Radio Astronomy Essay
In the 1930s a huge discovery was made; one that has led to many subsequent discoveries about the world beyond Earth. This discovery was radio astronomy, the study of celestial objects at radio frequencies. Radio and optical astronomy are two different ways to study stars, planets and moons in the universe; but the most useful would have to be radio astronomy. Despite this, there are some who do argue that optical astronomy is the more useful of the two.
Radio waves are a form of electromagnetic radiation and are given and received by many devices we use today, such as the radio, mobile phone or TV, but they have also been detected in space. Radio waves have long wavelengths at a low frequency, carrying less energy. Radio
waves are produced when charged particles (electrons and protons) accelerate by changing speed or direction, emitting electromagnetic radiation. These radio waves are emitted by stars, planets and many other celestial objects in our universe, which can be detected by a radio telescope on Earth. A radio telescope is a telescope that has been designed to receive radio waves from space. The telescope is made up of 3 main components; the antenna(s) to collect incoming radio waves, a receiver and amplifier to boost weak radio signals to a recordable level and a recorder to record the radio signal. The antenna is generally a parabolic dish that reflects the radio waves to the receiver, but some of the earliest radio telescopes used a Yagi antenna, which is very similar to what is used for TV reception.
Radio astronomy differs from optical astronomy in that optical astronomy studies celestial objects through visible-light rather than radio waves.
Radio astronomy does have advantages over optical astronomy, making it more useful for astronomers and scientists. Optical and radio astronomy deliver similar data; both can measure distance from Earth, size, motion through space and for optical astronomy, chemical composition and radio astronomy, energy. An advantage of radio astronomy is that optical astronomy can only be performed after sunset, while radio astronomy as it detects invisible light can be performed at any hour of the day. Another, probably more key advantage of radio astronomy is that in our galaxy there is quite a bit of dust, which makes some other galaxies impossible to view using visible light and optical telescopes. Radio waves travel unimpeded by this dust and allow us to detect these other galaxies, and along with this allow us to perform radio astronomy with clouds and rain. Radio astronomy has also helped detect many new objects that would have otherwise gone unnoticed with optical astronomy. One of these includes pulsars, which beam intense radio beams of radio waves out into space. Pulsars are rapidly spinning neutron stars that are collapsed cores of massive stars which have run out of fuel. These are just some advantages to radio astronomy over optical astronomy, there are many more which come as a benefit to scientists both now, in the past and in the
future.