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Astronomy

A guide to what the eye, the dish, and the mirror have seen — from a 4.6 Gyr-old yellow dwarf, to galaxies whose photons left before Earth had oceans.

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A guide to what the eye, the dish, and the mirror have seen — from a 4.6 Gyr-old yellow dwarf, to galaxies whose photons left before Earth had oceans. Key sections include: The visible universe.; Eight planets and a star.; How stars live and die.; Three equations that opened the cosmos.; Hubble's tuning fork.; From the Big Bang to now.; The oldest photograph.; Deep field.; Who saw further.; Spacetime's vanishing point..

Key sections

  • 01The visible universe.
  • 02Eight planets and a star.
  • 03How stars live and die.
  • 04Three equations that opened the cosmos.
  • 05Hubble's tuning fork.
  • 06From the Big Bang to now.
  • 07The oldest photograph.
  • 08Deep field.
  • 09Who saw further.
  • 10Spacetime's vanishing point.
  • 11Other worlds.
  • 12The infrared revolution.
  • 13What we're chasing now.
  • 14What we still don't know.
  • 15Watch & read.

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Slide outline
  1. 01The visible universe.
  2. 02Eight planets and a star.
  3. 03How stars live and die.
  4. 04Three equations that opened the cosmos.
  5. 05Hubble's tuning fork.
  6. 06From the Big Bang to now.
  7. 07The oldest photograph.
  8. 08Deep field.
  9. 09Who saw further.
  10. 10Spacetime's vanishing point.
  11. 11Other worlds.
  12. 12The infrared revolution.
  13. 13What we're chasing now.
  14. 14What we still don't know.
  15. 15Watch & read.
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Slide 01

The visible universe.

  • Page 01 / 16 — Hero
  • A guide to what the eye, the dish, and the mirror have seen — from a 4.6 Gyr-old yellow dwarf, to galaxies whose photons left before Earth had oceans.
  • 13.787 GyrAge of universe (Planck 2018)
  • ~10²²Stars in the observable cosmos
  • 2.725 KCMB temperature
  • 67.4 km/s/MpcHubble constant H₀
Slide 02

Eight planets and a star.

  • Page 02 / 16 — Solar System
  • The Sun contains 99.86 % of the system's mass. Around it, four rocky terrestrials, two ice/gas giants, and beyond Neptune the Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud — a roughly spherical reservoir whose comets perturb our skies.
  • Bode's pattern is no longer law, but distance still matters: the snow line, around 4 AU in our young solar nebula, separated rock-builders from gas-grabbers.
  • Mercury — 88 d orbit, no atmosphere
  • Venus — 92 bar CO₂, runaway greenhouse
  • Earth — only known biosphere
  • Mars — Olympus Mons, 22 km tall
  • Jupiter — 318 M⊕, 79+ moons
  • Saturn — A/B/C rings, 1 m thick
  • Uranus — 98° axial tilt
  • Neptune — 5.4 hour winds, 2,100 km/h
  • Fig. 02.1 · Orbits to scale; planet sizes exaggerated for legibility. Inner rocky group ≤ 1.5 AU; outer giants 5–30 AU.
Slide 03

How stars live and die.

  • Page 03 / 16 — Stellar Lifecycles
  • Birth
  • Molecular Cloud Collapse
  • Cold H₂ regions (10–30 K) fragment under self-gravity. The Jeans mass sets the threshold. Protostars accrete from a disk; bipolar jets clear the envelope.
  • Main Sequence
  • Hydrogen Fusion
  • Core p-p chain or CNO cycle converts 4H → He. Mass dictates everything: a 0.5 M☉ red dwarf burns for ~80 Gyr, a 25 M☉ blue giant for only ~5 Myr.
  • Death
  • White Dwarf · Neutron Star · Black Hole
  • Below ~8 M☉: planetary nebula, white dwarf supported by electron degeneracy. Above: core-collapse supernova, leaving neutron star or — beyond Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit — a black hole.
Slide 04

Three equations that opened the cosmos.

  • Page 04 / 16 — Foundational Equations
  • Newton's Law of Gravitation, 1687
  • Every mass attracts every other mass.
  • F = G m1m2 / r2
  • G = 6.674 × 10⁻¹¹ N·m²/kg². The first universal law — pulled the apple and held the Moon.
  • Einstein Field Equations, 1915
  • Mass–energy curves spacetime.
  • Gμν + Λgμν = (8πG/c4) Tμν
  • Predicted gravitational lensing, Mercury's perihelion shift, gravitational waves (LIGO, 2015), and the expanding universe itself.
  • Friedmann Equation, 1922
  • The universe's expansion history.
  • (H)2 = (8πG/3) ρ − kc2/a2 + Λc2/3
  • From it we get the Hubble flow, the critical density, and — once Λ > 0 — accelerated expansion driven by dark energy.
Slide 05

Hubble's tuning fork.

  • Page 05 / 16 — Galaxies
  • Edwin Hubble in 1926 sorted the "nebulae" into ellipticals (E0–E7), spirals (Sa, Sb, Sc) and barred spirals (SBa–SBc), with irregulars off to the side. Modern surveys (SDSS, GAMA) refine but preserve the scheme.
  • The Milky Way is an SBbc spiral, ~100 kly across, ~10¹¹ stars, with a 4.15 × 10⁶ M☉ supermassive black hole — Sagittarius A* — at the heart, imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2022.
  • Galaxies inhabit a cosmic web: filaments and walls of dark matter, voids the size of a hundred Mpc.
Slide 06

From the Big Bang to now.

  • Page 06 / 16 — Cosmic Timeline
  • t = 10⁻⁴³ s · Planck epochQuantum gravity dominates; physics as we know it does not yet apply.
  • t = 10⁻³⁶ s · InflationAlan Guth (1980): exponential expansion by factor ≥ 10²⁶ smooths and flattens the cosmos, seeds quantum fluctuations.
  • t = 10⁻⁶ s · Quark–hadron transitionQuarks confine into protons and neutrons.
  • t = 1–3 min · Big Bang Nucleosynthesis~75 % H, 25 % He by mass, traces of Li forged. Predicted by Gamow, Alpher, Herman; confirmed.
  • t = 380,000 yr · RecombinationUniverse cools to 3,000 K; electrons bind to nuclei; photons stream free as the CMB.
  • t ≈ 200 Myr · First starsPop III stars ignite; reionize the neutral fog. JWST is now finding their successors.
  • t ≈ 9 Gyr · Solar SystemSun and planets form from a collapsing molecular cloud.
  • t = 13.787 Gyr · TodayDark energy dominant; accelerated expansion; cosmic web fully formed.
Slide 07

The oldest photograph.

  • Page 07 / 16 — Cosmic Microwave Background
  • Discovered by accident in 1964 by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson at Bell Labs, the CMB is a near-perfect 2.725 K blackbody bathing the sky from every direction. Tiny anisotropies — one part in 10⁵ — encode the seeds of every galaxy we see.
  • COBE (1992), WMAP (2003), and Planck (2013, 2018) measured those wrinkles, fixing the universe's geometry as flat and its composition: 68.5 % dark energy, 26.5 % dark matter, 5 % ordinary matter.
  • peak λ ≈ 1.06 mm · Tγ = 2.7255 ± 0.0006 K
Slide 08

Deep field.

  • Page 08 / 16 — Plate
  • A long-exposure analog. JWST's actual NIRCam fields show galaxies at z ≥ 13, photons emitted ~325 Myr after the Big Bang.
Slide 09

Who saw further.

  • Page 09 / 16 — Key Figures
  • AstronomerHipparchus
  • ~150 BCE
  • Catalogued ~850 stars; discovered precession of equinoxes.
  • HeliocentrismCopernicus
  • 1473–1543
  • De revolutionibus moved Earth from the cosmic centre.
  • TelescopeGalileo
  • 1564–1642
  • Moons of Jupiter, phases of Venus, Milky Way as stars.
  • LawsKepler
  • 1571–1630
  • Three laws of planetary motion from Tycho's data.
  • CosmologistHubble
  • 1889–1953
  • Showed galaxies recede; the universe expands.
  • VariablesHenrietta Leavitt
  • 1868–1921
  • Cepheid period-luminosity relation — the cosmic ruler.
  • PulsarsJocelyn Bell Burnell
  • b. 1943
  • Discovered radio pulsars in 1967; rotating neutron stars.
  • Dark matterVera Rubin
  • 1928–2016
  • Galaxy rotation curves implied invisible halos.
Slide 10

Spacetime's vanishing point.

  • Page 10 / 16 — Black Holes
  • The Schwarzschild radius — rs = 2GM/c2 — defines the event horizon: the surface beyond which nothing escapes. For one solar mass, ~2.95 km. For Sgr A*, 12 million km.
  • Stellar-mass black holes are the corpses of massive stars. Supermassive ones (10⁶–10¹⁰ M☉) anchor every large galaxy, tied to host bulge mass via the M–σ relation.
  • Hawking (1974): black holes radiate, with T = ħc3/(8πGMk) — vanishingly small for stellar mass, but profound for theory.
  • EHT imaged M87* (2019) and Sgr A* (2022). LIGO detected the GW150914 binary merger in 2015 — confirming Einstein's last prediction.
Slide 11

Other worlds.

  • Page 11 / 16 — Exoplanets
  • Transit
  • Star dims by 0.01–1 % as planet crosses face. Kepler (2009–18): 2,778 confirmed. TESS continues all-sky survey.
  • Radial Velocity
  • Star wobbles. 1995: Mayor & Queloz find 51 Pegasi b — first exoplanet around a sun-like star (Nobel 2019).
  • Direct Imaging
  • Coronagraph blocks starlight. JWST has resolved HR 8799 system, sniffed CO₂ in WASP-39b's atmosphere.
  • 6,000+Confirmed exoplanets (NASA/JPL tally, Sept 2025)
  • ~70In conservative habitable zones
  • TRAPPIST-17 Earth-size worlds, 39 ly
  • Proxima bClosest exoplanet · 4.24 ly
Slide 12

Slide 12

  • Page 12 / 16 — Pull Quote
  • "Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another."— Plato, Republic, Book VII
Slide 13

The infrared revolution.

  • Page 13 / 16 — JWST
  • Launched on Christmas Day 2021, parked at the L2 Lagrange point, the James Webb Space Telescope's 6.5 m segmented gold-coated beryllium mirror collects ~6× the light of Hubble's, in wavelengths 0.6–28 μm.
  • In the infrared, light from the very early universe is shifted into view — letting JWST see galaxies at z > 13, less than 330 Myr after the Big Bang. It also peers through dust into stellar nurseries (the Pillars of Creation, Carina) and analyzes exoplanet atmospheres by transmission spectroscopy.
  • Diameter: 6.5 m (18 hexagons)
  • Sun-shield: tennis court sized, 5 layers
  • Operating temperature: ~50 K
  • Mission lifetime: 20 yr+ propellant
Slide 14

What we're chasing now.

  • Page 14 / 16 — Current Frontier
  • The Hubble Tension
  • Local distance-ladder gives H₀ ≈ 73 km/s/Mpc; CMB-derived gives 67.4. The 5σ disagreement may signal new physics — early dark energy? Modified gravity?
  • Dark Matter Detection
  • XENONnT and LZ probe WIMPs with ever-better sensitivity. Axion searches (ADMX) underway. Or perhaps modifications to gravity à la MOND/MOG?
  • Multi-messenger Astronomy
  • GW170817 — neutron-star merger seen in gravitational waves and gamma rays. IceCube neutrinos pin down blazar TXS 0506+056 as a cosmic-ray source.
  • Habitable Worlds Observatory
  • NASA's planned ~6 m UV/optical/IR telescope (2040s) — designed to image and spectrally characterize ~25 nearby Earth-like exoplanets.
Slide 15

What we still don't know.

  • Page 15 / 16 — Open Questions
  • What is dark energy?
  • Cosmological constant Λ? Dynamical scalar field? An artefact of inhomogeneity? It drives 68 % of the cosmos.
  • Why is the universe flat & smooth?
  • Inflation explains it — but what is the inflaton field? Is there a multiverse of pocket universes?
  • Are we alone?
  • Drake equation, Fermi paradox. Biosignatures (O₂+CH₄), technosignatures (SETI). No detection yet.
  • What lies beyond the cosmological horizon?
  • ~46.5 Gly comoving — but the universe likely extends far further. Maybe infinitely.
  • How did supermassive black holes get so big, so early?
  • JWST sees ~10⁹ M☉ black holes at z ≈ 7. Direct collapse? Mergers?
  • Information paradox
  • Hawking radiation seems thermal. Where does the infallen information go? Holography? Soft hair? Firewalls?
Slide 16

Watch & read.

  • Page 16 / 16 — Go Deeper
  • PBS Space Time — Cosmology Playlist
  • Matt O'Dowd's accessible-but-rigorous channel — the gold standard for theoretical physics on YouTube.
  • Watch ↗
  • References
  • Weinberg — Cosmology (2008)
  • Carroll — Spacetime and Geometry (2003)
  • Peebles — Cosmology's Century (2020)
  • Planck Collaboration — A&A 641, A6 (2020)
  • Riess et al. — ApJ Letters 934 (2022) on H₀
  • JADES Collaboration — JWST early-universe survey
  • EHT — ApJL 875 (2019); 930 (2022)
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