How Do Astronomers Obtain Most Of Their Information About Space??

Answer 1

Most information that astronomers obtain is all ready recorded for them to look up and learn about. The rest is discovered. Because of the atmospheric problems with getting information the Hubble Telescope was put into space. A great deal of information comes from the sattelite disc type telescopes which I believe use..let me to look it up I cannot remember right now. Some use light others use wave lengths that are collected in very large sattelite disc type telescopes I cannot remember the information about them but they have alot of these in Australia I believe because the sky is so clear so much of the time.
http://www.astronomy.org.au/ngn/engine.php
Australian Astronomy is an official web site of the Astronomical Society of Australia featuring extensive links to astronomical research, teaching, and public education facilities and activities in Australia.
Internationally acclaimed research
World class facilities
Clear dark skies
An important Southern Hemisphere location

The skies are very clear in Australia so they do a great deal of astronomy research

http://www.cv.nrao.edu/fits/www/yp_infosys.html
MIT Microwave Subnode , Infrared Subnode

They use different types of spectra such as light wave lengths, radio wave lengths and use predefined information in helping determine what they are observing. Yes they do use sattelites etc. that they sent out to observe also things that are too far away or have too much interference on earth for observation.

Astronomy Information Systems

JPL Molecular Spectroscopy ( JPL Line Catalog )
The JPL Molecular Spectroscopy Home Page is the starting point for accessing the JPL Submillimeter, Millimeter, and Microwave Spectral Line Catalog, which is a collection of predicted line positions and intensities for use in Astrophysics, Planetary Science, and studies of the Earth Atmosphere. There is also a collection of programs used to calculate the spectra.
Aladin Sky Atlas
Aladin is an interactive sky atlas, developed at CDS (Strasbourg, France), allowing the user to visualize digitized images of any part of the sky, to superimpose entries from astronomical catalogs or personal user data files, and to interactively access related data and information from the Simbad, NED, and Vizier databases for all known objects in the field.
Applied Information Systems Research Program ( AISRP )
The AISR program, at NASA Office of Space Sciences (OSS) maintains an awareness of emerging technologies applicable to space science disciplines, supports applied research in computer and information systems science and technology to enhance NASA OSS programs, stimulates application development where warranted, and provides for systems analysis and engineering required to transfer new technology into evolving OSS Space science programs through NASA Research Announcements.

Visualization was the original method for observing the stars, then light seen through lenses (telescopes) were created and used to amplify the light seen, then other methods were added as discovered and interpreted such as radio wave lengths I believe.

Answer 2

Proxy data.

Proxy data are data the are related to the thing we wish to measure, but they are not the thing itself we measure. For example, we'd like to measure the heat of the corona of our Sun. Clearly, we can't go to the Sun and stick a thermometer into it.

Instead, we measre the light emitted from it. And there is a law of physics that relates the color of light to the temperature of the thing emitting that light. In general, the hotter a body like the Sun is, the more the color of the light shifts to the blue end of the spectrum. A relatively cool star, for example, would be kind of reddish in color. Our Sun is yellowish; so it's hotter than a red star. There are other stars (dwarf stars) that are so hot, they look quite blue.

The distribution, intensities, and frequencies of radio signals are other examples of proxy data. These can be used to infer energy levels of the space we are looking at. Higher frequencies mean higher energies, for example. So we can look for objects that are invisible to ordinary light, but show up in the radio and other parts of the electro magnetic spectrum.

Some pulsating stars can be used to measure vast distance...more or less. Again we can't just take a tape and string it out to measure distances to a star millions of light years away, but we can use proxy data to guesstimate how far a pulsating star is from Earth.

It is known that certain pulsating stars have a given luminosity called absolute magnitude. When we find one of these stars, we can figure out how far away it is by comparing the observered magnitude with what we know its real magnitude is. The dimmer the observered magnitude is, the farther away that pulsating star is.

There you are...some examples of how proxy data (usually electromagnetic data like light and radio waves) can be used to infer distance and temperature.

Answer 3

From The National Enquirer and from YahooAnswers.

Answer 4

i believe it was satellites sent out into space and took pictures then sent the information back to earth

Answer 5

All kinds of different telescopes, operating at different wavelengths of light.

Answer 6

From conjecture an postulation.

Answer 7

One word: spectroscopy.

Answer 8

They look up! Well... That and algabra!