Math & Astronomy

Astronomy involves the study of the celestial objects in space, which are the moon, the Sun, the planets, stars, the milky way, the galaxies & the universe.

The distances between the Earth and these objects are beyond our abilities even to comprehend. We have just managed to land humans on the Moon, which is nearest to us. We are just realising the enormity of the Universe in which our planet Earth is situated.

Hence the various aspects of these celestial objects have to be calculated only from our position on the Earth.

This is where mathematics has helped humans for the last 3 to 4 millennia.

The earliest science studied by all cultures was astronomy. And it involved the use of trigonometry and angular measurements.

The collection of data on the time taken & the regularity of the movement of the Moon & Sun helped us understand the structure of the solar system. Astronomer Tycho Brahe documented a huge amount of celestial observations. Kepler studied these data and came out with the laws governing the movement of planets around the Sun.

The understanding of the geometry of the lunar & solar eclipse helped Greek philosophers in working out the distances between the Moon, Sun & the Earth.

Mathematics also helped the prediction of the eclipses and tabulating astronomical data even in the ancient times.

The understanding of the science of optics and the mathematical relations in it helped in the construction of telescopes which deepened our understanding of the Universe.

The use of ratio & proportion helped humans to understand the enormity of the distances involved in a relative sense. It makes it easy for a child to understand the sizes of the Sun & the Earth if it is told that “if you imagine the Sun to be the size of an orange, the Earth would be like a mustard seed!

The scientific notation using exponents also made it easy to represent these huge numbers.

The calculation of the speed of light helped the development of the measuring unit of the light-year to represent astronomical distances in numbers small enough for humans to understand.

Ideas like the Big Bang, expansion of the Universe & black holes are so abstract and beyond our normal experiences that they can only be presented in terms of mathematical equations.

Math plays a very vital part in studying celestial objects, their movements & their properties.