how an astronomer's method of gathering information differs from that of other scientists?

Answer 1

Hi. Astronomers capture and study photons. Most other scientists may USE photons, but not in the same way.

Answer 2

Astronomy deals with objects that are very large and timescales that are very long compared to our normal experiences. This makes interacting directly with them impractical in most cases. Since people are not used to dealing with these scales, astronomers need a strong theoretical framework to deal with these objects to makes sense of observations about objects that are so vastly larger than the objects of our daily experience.

Like other scientists, astronomers create theories, and compare the results of their theories to future observations. They sometimes wait for serendipity to provide them with an observational events, such as a supernova explosion or an occultation of a star by a planet.

Unlike other sciences, astronomers can look directly at the past when looking at remote objects. That's because the speed of light is slow compared to astronomical distances. For long duration events, astronomers have to look at different objects to observe different points in time. They must generalize to classes of objects to observe changes over time. They can observe stars from several billion years ago, but cannot observe our own sun from that era. To understand a stars life-cycle for example, they can look at different stars at various points in time, and create theories that match the various observations of similar objects. Astronomers use this fact to make theories about astronomical processes and select appropriate observations to test their theories.

Answer 3

Astronomers mostly study their subject by observation, rather than experimentation, because they don't have direct access to the material they study.

Answer 4

astronomers usually are forced to use indirect evidence, they can't study a star or a galaxy up close so they have to look at it from a distance and figure out what is happening.